Aid agencies buy online keywords to promote Asian floods appeals
Howard Lake | 29 December 2004 | News
Aid agencies are promoting their online appeals for the Asian floods emergency by buying related keywords to target their text adverts to relevant news pages.
Some aid agencies have moved quickly to promote their online fundraising appeals following the devastating tsunamis of 26 December that have killed tens of thousands of people around the Bay of Bengal.
They have bid on disaster-related keywords on text advertising networks such as Overture and Google AdWords. As a result, their text advert appeals for donations are appearing on news pages that cover this major story. Potential donors are therefore just one click away from offering practical support.
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Rick Christ, president of NP Advisors, recommended this approach to those non-profits involved in the relief effort. Writing in a special edition of his e-fund news yesterday, he said: “keyword buys are vital to disaster relief charities because the ads get picked up in many online news articles, providing a link directly from those news articles on the disaster to the donation pages of the charities.”
His agency was quick to buy related key words for clients, and has also written copy for clients’ emergency e-mail appeals.
UK Fundraising has spotted that organisations that have secured their adverts to appear on Google’s text advert network include the British Red Cross, Save the Children, World Vision, Methodist Relief, and The Jewish Community in Thaliand [sic]. The latter typo demonstrates that haste is not always conducive to accuracy.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.