Ads for Social Good
Key Takeaway: The organisations with the most important things to say are often the least equipped to say them at scale.
Ads for Social Good Vungle Creative Labs, 2020
In March 2020, the WHO put out a global call. We answered it. And then we kept going.
When the world went into lockdown, I founded Ads for Social Good at Vungle. What started as a response to a pandemic became a sustained programme of charitable creative work that reached 87 million people across two distinct strands.​
Strand one: the COVID-19 campaign
Interactive playable ads built for public health behaviour change. The format was deliberate: in a moment when people felt powerless, an interactive ad gave them something to do.
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36.7 million views across 50+ countries in 22 languages
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Added to the WHO's global artwork library
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Winner, Most Effective Messaging Campaign, Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2020
Strand two: Ads for Charities
We opened Vungle Creative Labs' full production capability to charities including Whale and Dolphin Conservation and SpecialEffect, handling everything from raw assets to live creative across video, Combo Video, Fullscreen Display, and interactive rich media. A tiered charity framework managed demand at scale. Combined with strand one, the programme reached 87 million people.
The bigger picture
The results validated something more ambitious. In mid-2020, I authored a formal proposal for a Platform for Social Good: an always-on CSR strategy with a commercial model, a product roadmap including Adaptive Creative architecture, and an industry alliance concept that would invite mobile advertising partners to collectively power a fully trackable global charity ad network. The vision was not fully implemented, but the thinking was rigorous and the direction clear.
What it showed
The tools that sell products are the same tools that can help shift behaviour at scale. The organisations with the most important things to say rarely have access to them. That gap is structural, and generative AI is beginning to change what is possible.