Problems with advertising and email platform crypto bans

[CryptoOfCourseDotCom]

I have been trying to promote a video course on basic blockchain and crypto fundamentals, and part of the marketing strategy is to use paid ads (on Google, Bing, Facebook, Quora, etc.) to send traffic to our site. None of the platforms mentioned will allow us to run ads. None of them will explain the reasoning, outside of ambiguous statements in their Terms of Service. Even when the terms seem to allow for certain types of crypto-related content, such as purely educational material, they have still banned our ads. Some of the policies are simply ridiculous.

Quora, for example, ONLY allows advertising for exchanges, wallets, and financial services...these are the most likely products and services to be scams, in my experience. Is this insane or is it just me?

AdWords approved the first ad I created after I appealed the initial ban (which I assume is AI-driven via keyword flagging), because my product was so obviously NOT a scam. Then they reversed that decision with no explanation when I tried to create a second ad, and blocked my entire campaign from running.

Bing doesn't explicitly block my ads from running, but their algorithm assigns all my keywords a "quality score" of 0, even when I have exact matching phrases from keyword to ad to landing page.

I have been kicked off of 3 email platforms so far, 2 of them simply for drafting emails with crypto-related keywords that I NEVER SENT.

Believe me, I have worked in marketing for 20 years and my content is way better than much of the spammy content that litters the Web. I do not promise anyone riches, or amazing profits, or any outlandish statements in that vein.

Anyway, it's very frustrating that I am trying to promote content that actually SAVES people from scammers, but I am being defined as a potential scammer by all these companies that regularly publish fraudulent marketing claims and ads for completely scam products.

Does anyone else promoting crypto products or services that AREN'T scams have any of these problems? I have never encountered anything like this irrational fear...or maybe there are other reasons that I haven't considered?

Anyone have any thoughts? Does anyone know of any crypto-specific ad channels that you've had success with?

Thanks for your help!

[cissrawk]

Anyone have any thoughts? Does anyone know of any crypto-specific ad channels that you've had success with?

Ad channels? something like Coinzilla?
I never try crypto specific ad, but how about try to promote it on crypto forum? It probably will more effective, since you want to promote something that have crypto-specific on it. You can promote it in this forum too by auction, as long as you understand the rules.

[davis196]

It's old news that Adwords and Facebook banned all crypto related ads.
3 weeks ago,I saw a Youtube ad about a cryptocurrency platform,so I guess that it's still allowed to advertise crypto products on Youtube.
Reddit Ads are an option as well,there are many crypto subreddits on Reddit,maybe they will allow crypto ads,however,the traffic from Reddit isn't converting that much.
Perhaps you should focus on content marketing or influencer marketing,instead of PPC.

[1Referee]

It's old news that Adwords and Facebook banned all crypto related ads.

Actually, Facebook is no longer banning all crypto related ads. Legitimate businesses with the right licenses are still allowed to buy ad space after a brief audit on Facebook's side. Unfortunately for OP, he doesn't fit in that category.

You can promote it in this forum too by auction, as long as you understand the rules.

That. Either buy ad space by participating in the weekly auctions (link to current round) hosted by theymos, or contact a capable campaign manager which still is or has recently ran a signature campaign. You can also try to buy ad space on the more popular news outlets such as Coindesk, CCN, Bitcoinist, etc (avoid bitcoin dot com).

[nc50lc]

Anyone have any thoughts?

If you're willing to add low-high quality traffic, you can try to establish partnership/sponsorship with a well-known youtube crypto-related channels (with lots of subscribers and trending newly uploaded videos).
The sponsored channel should add a link to your site to every video description together with a short introduction to the offered services.
And if possible, add a short end credits saying "sponsored by 'your site' " or a thumbnail w/ a preview of the videos (as I noticed on some videos, regulations regarding this is kinda "unpremeditated" by youtube).

Try to contact VoskCoin (not affiliated with me, I'm just a viewer) if he's available or his channel A+~ed your expectations.

Depending on the channel, you might get a lot of prospective regular visitors.
And most importantly, this is probably cheaper than most Display ads APIs and services.

[supermine]

You can hire the personal youtube channels and facebook pages to run your ads because they too have high traffic and you can go with them with much cheaper rates than buying advertisement space on their own and also you can try promoting your project or product in this forum when that is related to crypto because this is one of the most users active related to the crypto currencies.Go and participate in the auction to buy the advertisement slot or just run the signature campaigns also depends on your budget for advertising.

[timerland]

Unfortunately, there are a ton of companies that are actively working against crypto marketing with terms that forbid it from being put onto their platform. It's ironic though that they're happily putting other scams, ponzis, MLMs on their platform, but not certain legit crypto content.

There's nothing we can do here, because it's the choice of the company as to their policy to remove certain advertisement content.

Sure, you could try sponsoring a youtube content creator but most are shady with promoting ponzis, and they're most likely going to be expensive. Have you tried bitcoin specific ad networks like a-ads? You might even get some more relevant traffic as well since they're mostly put onto crypto related sites, though make sure you do read up on the most recent reviews since some of these bitcoin ad network sites are scams, unfortunately.

Your last option is PTC sites, which is cheap, but going to be extremely ineffective and should be avoided. Again, look into a-ads and similar platforms. Perhaps they can be of use.

[BlockTreeClub]

My heart goes out to you. I had half a dozen facebook audiences ready when they announced the ban.

There is one idea I have had which will be more useful for your business model than ours.

Have you tried an affiliate platform? Most crypto-affiliate platforms (SpicyOffer, runCPA, biggico) stick with a few verticals like ICO, binaries, gambling, etc.

But because you have an educational product, you can use pretty much any affiliate network. You can pay through revenue share, cost per click, cost per lead, cost per action, or cost per sale.

I'm not huge on cost per mille (too much banner-blindness out there), but you can also go for that.

[milewilda]

You can hire the personal youtube channels and facebook pages to run your ads because they too have high traffic and you can go with them with much cheaper rates than buying advertisement space on their own and also you can try promoting your project or product in this forum when that is related to crypto because this is one of the most users active related to the crypto currencies.Go and participate in the auction to buy the advertisement slot or just run the signature campaigns also depends on your budget for advertising.

These are the best way not only on less cost but also rather an effective way of advertising since you can utilize or do take advantage of popularity of those people who do have large group.
This issue isnt new anymore since they had really made some restrictions wayback before but still you can find some alternatives and there no need for you to follow up those traditional paths on ways of advertising.

[gentlemand]

You can blame all the scummy ICO shit for that. Most of the mainstream platforms shut them down and now only preapprove stuff. I wasn't aware of only specific types of services being allowed, but it does kind of make sense. They're not the most personalised of services so they'll assume anything educational is selling some piece of shit hype newsletter.

I've noticed more than a few simply messed with their wording, adjusting it to crypt0 for instance, but that's not going to last long.

You could try a PR company which rarely seems to occur to people. It may even cost less and wind up in better places.