Teams rewrite creative, soften claims and appeal, over and over, when the problem was never the copy. All three platforms gate on the product category first, the targeted location second, and your licence third. Get those wrong and no amount of rewriting will fix it. This is what the policies actually say, read by a marketer rather than a lawyer.
Every gate Google, Meta and X apply, in the order they apply them — product category first, targeted location second, licence third — on one page you can hand to whoever writes the creative. Tell me what you’re trying to advertise and where, and I’ll send it back with the parts that matter to you flagged.
Category decides eligibility before anything else. Some categories are closed at any budget.
Google only permits restricted crypto ads in approved locations. Off the list means off the platform.
Meta accepts a defined list per country. No licence, no written permission.
Which is where most teams start, and why they keep getting flagged.
You cannot advertise a token launch on Google or X. At all. Anywhere.
Google prohibits ads promoting initial coin offerings, DeFi trading protocols, and the purchase, sale or trade of cryptocurrencies — regardless of location. The list of examples is explicit: ICO pre-sales and public offerings, initial DEX offerings, token liquidity pools, cryptocurrency loans, unhosted software wallets, unregulated dApps.
X prohibits the same thing in its own words: initial coin offerings, initial exchange offerings and initial decentralised exchange offerings. On Meta a token sale falls under investment solicitation, which needs written permission granted only against a recognised regulatory licence.
There is no certification that unlocks this. No licence, no jurisdiction, no agency relationship. The restriction is not about who you are. It is about what is being sold.
Ad destinations that aggregate or compare issuers are also out — trading signals, investment advice, affiliate and broker-review sites. So the standard workaround, pointing paid traffic at a comparison page instead, is closed too.
If your launch plan has a Google Ads line in it, the plan needs rewriting, not the ad copy. That is a strategy conversation and it should happen before the budget is set, not after the account is disabled.
Allowed outright, allowed with certification, or closed.
Education is allowed — until it isn’t. Google permits cryptocurrency educational material, but only where the content offers no investment advice, tips, odds, financial calculators or technical trend analysis. A price-prediction widget or a “what could $1,000 be worth” calculator moves an educational page into a prohibited category. Content teams add those precisely because they convert.
Certification is per location, and you have to be licensed in it. Approval requires that the targeted location is on Google’s approved list, that your application for it is approved, and that you are a licensed provider there. Hardware wallets are the one exception to the licensing requirement. Advertising in more than one market means a separate application for each.
From June 2026, the application moves. Google is retiring Help Center submissions for these certifications; applications go through the Google Ads account instead. Existing applications are unaffected.
You get a warning. Google states that violations of this policy will not lead to immediate suspension without prior warning, and that a warning arrives at least seven days before any suspension. Seven days is enough to fix a landing page or pause a campaign. It is not enough if nobody is reading the account notifications, which is the usual reason a warning becomes a ban.
Meta requires prior written permission, requested through the Authorisations and verifications tab in Meta Business Suite and granted against a recognised regulatory licence.
Permission required for: exchanges and trading platforms, including spot, margin and futures; crypto borrowing or lending; wallets that add buying, selling, swapping or staking; cryptocurrency mining software; and any ad soliciting investment — which Meta states explicitly includes affiliate and aggregator sites.
No permission required for: tax services for crypto companies; events, education and news that don’t offer crypto products; blockchain technology news; non-currency blockchain products such as NFTs; storage-only wallets with no buy, sell, swap or stake function; and cryptocurrency mining hardware.
Note the split both platforms make: mining hardware is unrestricted, mining software is not. Same company, same campaign, two different answers depending on which product the ad points at.
Certification required, and a separate request for every category.
X requires prior authorisation by certification, and states that a separate certification request is needed for each category under the policy — approval for NFTs does not extend to cryptocurrency products. Teams routinely assume one approval covers the account.
Two things X bans that the others don’t. Mining is prohibited outright, including hardware — where Google and Meta both permit mining hardware without any application. And crypto tax calculators are a restricted category requiring a licence, where Meta treats crypto tax services as unrestricted.
The country list is broad but has a crypto-specific carve-out. Financial services can target a long list including the UAE, the UK, Spain and the US — but Belgium, Greece, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia and Ukraine are excluded from cryptocurrency and DeFi advertising specifically, even though other financial products can run there. That distinction is easy to miss and expensive to discover late.
Licensing follows the same per-country pattern: AUSTRAC or an AFSL in Australia, FINTRAC MSB registration in Canada, an AMF Digital Asset Service Provider registration in France, BaFin in Germany, the SFC in Hong Kong, a CAESP licence from Japan’s FSA, the Dutch National Bank, Finland’s FIN-FSA, Denmark’s FSA, Malaysia’s Securities Commission, and India’s ASCI guidelines for Virtual Digital Assets.
Which is why one media plan across three platforms is not a plan.
Token sale or ICO. Prohibited outright on Google. Prohibited outright on X, along with IEOs and IDExOs. On Meta it falls under investment solicitation, which needs written permission granted only against a recognised licence. In practice: not advertisable.
Mining hardware. Allowed on Google with no application. Allowed on Meta with no permission. Prohibited on X. Same product, same ad, three answers.
Mining software. Needs written permission on Meta. Prohibited on X.
Crypto tax tools. Meta allows tax services for crypto companies without permission. X restricts tax calculators behind a licence. On Google, adding a calculator to an education page is what reclassifies it out of the permitted category altogether.
Staking. Written permission on Meta. Licence-gated on X. On Google it sits inside the prohibited trading and DeFi categories.
Education. The one consistent green light — permitted on all three without licensing. But Google withdraws it the moment the page carries investment advice, tips, odds, financial calculators or technical trend analysis, and Meta withdraws it if the content offers crypto products or services.
Not exhaustive — the ones most relevant if you are marketing into Europe, the UK, the Gulf or the US.
United Kingdom — Financial Conduct Authority authorisation.
Europe — BaFin in Germany, AMF in France, Bank of Spain in Spain, Banco de Portugal, CSSF in Luxembourg, MFSA in Malta, Dutch Central Bank, Finanstilsynet in Norway, Fin-FSA in Finland, FMA in Austria, plus Estonia, Sweden and Switzerland’s FINMA fintech licence.
United Arab Emirates — four separate routes: a licence from the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority; a stored value facility licence from the Central Bank of the UAE; an investment-token licence from the DIFC’s Dubai Financial Services Authority; or a Full Market Product licence from VARA.
United States — FinCEN MSB registration, or a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services.
Asia-Pacific — MAS in Singapore, the Japanese FSA, Hong Kong’s SFC for Type 1, 7 and 9 activities, AUSTRAC and ASIC in Australia, plus Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea.
Summarised from published platform policy for marketing planning. Not legal advice, and both lists change — check the source before committing budget.
Decide the advertisable product before the media plan. If the token itself can’t be advertised, something adjacent usually can — the exchange listing, the wallet, the education, the event. That is a positioning decision, not a media one.
Map licence to market, not market to ambition. Meta’s list is the real constraint on where paid can run. A campaign aimed at a market where you hold no accepted licence is a campaign that cannot be bought.
Keep the calculators off the education pages. The thing that lifts conversion is the thing that reclassifies the page.
Read the account warnings. Seven days is a real window and most teams waste it.
The wider point, and the reason this page exists: compliance shapes crypto marketing long before legal ever sees it. More on that in crypto marketing compliance — MiCA’s four marketing articles, the FCA’s layout rules, and the consent rule that removes retargeting from a US media plan.
No. ICOs, IDOs, pre-sales and the purchase or trade of crypto are prohibited regardless of location. No certification unlocks them.
Exchanges, software wallets, hardware wallets and coin trusts — plus an approved location and a licence in it. Separate application per market. From June 2026, applied for inside the Google Ads account.
Not under this policy. Google says a warning comes at least seven days before suspension.
Prior written permission via Authorisations and verifications in Business Suite, granted against a recognised licence — FCA in the UK, VARA or ADGM in the UAE, FinCEN or a BitLicense in the US.
Hardware is fine on Google and Meta without application. Software needs permission on Meta. X prohibits mining entirely, hardware included. Same product, three answers.
Certification, and a separate request per category — NFT approval doesn’t cover crypto. ICOs, IEOs and IDExOs are banned. Exchanges, wallets, staking, CFDs, ATMs, cards and even tax calculators are licence-gated.
Belgium, Greece, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia and Ukraine are excluded from crypto and DeFi specifically — even though other financial products can run there.
No. It is a marketer’s summary of published platform policy, for planning. Your counsel owns the regulatory position.
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