The UK’s more expansive, post-Brexit role in digital regulation continues to be felt today via a policy change by Google, which has announced that it will, shortly, only run ads for financial products and services when the financial watchdog, the FCA, has verified the advertiser in question. The Google Ads Financial Products and Services policy will be updated from August 30, per Google, which specifies that it will start enforcing the new policy from September 6 — meaning that purveyors of online financial scams who’ve been relying on its ad network to net their next victim still have more than two months to harvest unsuspecting clicks before the party is over (well, in the UK, anyway).
Google’s decision to allow only regulator-authorized financial entities to run ads for financial products & services follows warnings from the Financial Conduct Authority that it may take legal action if Google continues to accept unscreened financial ads, as the Guardian reported earlier. The FCA told a parliamentary committee this month that it can contemplate taking such action due to no longer being bound by European Union rules on financial adverts, which do not extend to online platforms, per the newspaper’s report.
Until gaining the power to go after Google itself, the FCA appears to have been trying to combat online financial fraud by paying Google large amounts of UK taxpayer money to fight scams with anti-scam warnings. According to the Register, the FCA paid Google more than £600,000 (~$830k) in 2020 and 2021 to run ‘anti-scam ads — with the regulator essentially engaged in a bidding war with scammers to pour enough money into Google’s coffers so that regulator warnings about financial scams might appear higher than the scams themselves.
The full-facepalm situation was presumably highly lucrative for Google. However, the threat of legal action appears to have triggered a policy rethink. Writing in its blog post, Ronan Harris, a VP and MD for Google UK & Ireland, said: “Financial services advertisers will be required to demonstrate that they are authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the limited exemptions described in the UK Financial Services verification page.”
“This new update builds on significant work in partnership with the FCA over the last 18 months to help tackle this issue,” he added. “Today’s announcement reflects significant progress in delivering a safer experience for users, publishers, and advertisers. While we understand that this policy update will impact a range of advertisers in the financial services space, our utmost priority is to keep users safe on our platforms — particularly in an area so disproportionately targeted by fraudsters.” The company’s blog also claims that it has pledged $5M in advertising credits to support financial fraud public awareness campaigns in the UK. So, not $5M in actual money, then.
