Charities' tsunami appeals in top three online campaigns in Europe
Howard Lake | 13 January 2005 | News
Research from Nielsen//NetRatings, the leading provider of Internet research and analysis, shows that charities’ online appeals in the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster reached the top three positions in many European countries in the first week of January 2005.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, many charities in Europe placed adverts on other sites to drive traffic to their tsunami appeal pages. Many of these campaigns were much alrger tha other commercial online campaigns at the time.
As a result, in Sweden, the top three campaigns, based on number of sites used, were all from charities collecting for the relief operations. In the UK, the Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC) appeal ranked second in the country, and most other countries showed charity appeals within the top three for the week.
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![[graph: top charity appeals in the new campaigns list for week ending 09/01/2005]](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/graphics/graphs/netratings_tsunami_campaigns_200501.gif)
The research confirmed that the number of websites used for charity sector campaigns was significantly higher during this week compared to the average number of sites used throughout 2004. In 2004, the charity sector in most countries used an average of 4-5 websites per campaign: during the first full week of January 2005 the DEC in the UK placed their appeals on 30 sites, the Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe in Germany on 67 sites and the Croix Rouge (Red Cross) in France on a 101 sites.
![[graph: average number of sites used for charity campaigns 2004]](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/graphics/graphs/netratings_charity_campaigns_2004.gif)
According to The Guardian, the DEC employs two agencies, Tango Zebra and Joshua Interactive, to design appropriate banner ads in response to a new emergency appeal, and to get them accepted at key, high-traffic websites such as those of newspapers and consumer sites.
Given the size of the disaster and appeals, the number of sites carrying appeal campaign material is still very small compared to some previous campaigns. For example, in 2001 Comic Relief’s Turn the Web Red campaign succeeded in securing its button advert and Web link on 60,000 sites.
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.