The Good Tech Companies - Why Crypto and Fintech Brands Can't Run Traditional Ads Anymore and What They're Doing Instead

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/why-crypto-and-fintech-brands-cant-run-traditional-ads-anymore-and-what-theyre-doing-instead. Learn how crypto, fintech, and other restricted-category brands are adapting to tighter Meta and TikTok ad policies with street interview marketing. Check more stories related to undefined at: https://hackernoon.com/c/undefined. You can also check exclusive content about #crypto-advertising, #crypto-marketing-strategies, #crypto-ad-compliance, #fintech-digital-advertising, #category-advertising, #street-interview-marketing, #street-interview-advertising, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @jonstojanjournalist. Learn more about this writer by checking @jonstojanjournalist's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Crypto, fintech, and other regulated brands are finding traditional paid advertising increasingly difficult as Meta, TikTok, and other platforms tighten restrictions and require more documentation and pre-approval. Street Poller Media founder Shane Ginsberg argues that street interview creative offers a different approach: it feels more like authentic conversation than a conventional claims-heavy advertisement while giving agencies experienced in restricted categories a practical advantage in navigating platform review. The shift is making compliance knowledge and operational experience as important as creative production itself.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. Why Crypto and FinTech brands can't run traditional ads anymore and what they're doing instead, by John Stoy and journalist. Street Polar Media's founder and CEO Shane Ginsberg on why crypto and fintech brands can't run traditional ads anymore and what they're doing instead some of the fastest growing categories in digital advertising keep colliding with the same obstacle. Their ads get rejected or their entire ad accounts get disabled before a campaign ever reaches an audience. The problem has intensified considerably over the past two years as platforms have

formalized what we re-previously ad hoc enforcement practices into explicit policy regimes. Meta's compliance requirements around cryptocurrency advertising expanded substantially through 2025 and into 2026, introducing tiered authorization structures that require advertisers to submit regulatory licensing documentation before campaigns can run. Finance-related categories more broadly now face some of the highest ad-economic. count restriction rates on the platform, with industry analyzes placing restriction rates in investment and financial services well above most other verticals. Tick-Tock has similarly formalized a restricted industry list covering gambling and sports betting, cryptocurrency,

financial services, and weight loss and supplement products, each carrying its own pre-approval workflow, documentation requirements, and geographic eligibility limitations. The practical effect is that polished, claims heavy creative, precisely the kind of advertising these categories historically relied on, has become among the hardest material to get approved. Street Polar Media has spent years building specific operating experience inside exactly those categories, working across crypto, fintech, GLP1, pharmaceutical, and THC and CBD brands that many traditional creative agencies avoid entirely. Founder and CEO Shane Ginsberg has pointed to two factors behind that capability. The first is relationships. Years of operating continuously and restricted

categories has meant sustained direct contact with the platforms themselves. This matters in an environment where policy interpretation is frequently less clear than the written guidelines suggest and where knowing how a rule IS actually enforced differs meaningfully from knowing how it is written. The second, and arguably more structural, factor is the format itself. A street interview does not read as an overt sales pitch the way a produced, claims-driven advertisement does. It plays more like a conversation than a commercial. That distinction has real consequences during review, because a substantial portion of what triggers rejection in regulated categories is not the product being advertised but the specific claims being made about it.

A stranger describing their own experience is making a personal statement. A brand asserting an outcome is making a claim, and claims are what compliance systems are built to scrutinize. For advertisers in these categories, the calculation has shifted meaningfully over the past two years. The question is no longer which creative approach A brand prefers aesthetically or which format its marketing team is most comfortable producing. It has become considerably more basic, which formats can consistently clear review at all and which partners have enough accumulated experience in a given restricted category to navigate it without burning throughout accounts in the process. That shift has consequences beyond individual campaign performance. A disabled data account is not

merely a delayed campaign. Depending on the platform and the severity, it can mean losing accumulated pixel data, audience targeting history, and optimization signal that took months to build, which represents a far larger setback than the immediate media spend involved. Ginsberg's argument is that the agency's positioning in these categories is not primarily a creative advantage but an operational one. Any agency can theoretically produce a street interview. Considerably fewer have run enough campaigns across crypto, GLP 1, and cannabis adjacent categories to know in advance which questions, phrases, and creative structures tend to survive review and which reliably do not. For brands operating in categories where the regulatory environment continues tightening

rather than loosening, that accumulated knowledge has become a harder thing to source than creative talent. This story was distributed as a release by John Stoyen under Hackernoon Business Blogging Program. Thank you for listening to this Hackernoon story, read by artificial intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.