saving lives with a banner ad

January 25th, 2010 • posts i've written

In a single day, over 2,000 children are reported abducted here in the US.

That’s almost 800,000 missing kids a year.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, of the children abducted by strangers and murderers, 75% are killed within the first three hours.

The AMBER alert system was created to help spread the word about an abduction within that 3-hour window.

AMBER Alerts are currently distributed via commercial radio stations, satellite radio, television stations, and cable TV by the Emergency Alert System and NOAA Weather Radio, as well as via e-mail, electronic traffic-condition signs, the LED billboards which are located outside of newer Walgreens locations,[6] along with the LED/LCD signs of billboard companies such as Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Lamar, and wireless device SMS text messages. (from wikipedia)

As of August 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that 17 children had been successfully recovered after an Amber alert was issued, including one case in which the abductor released the child after hearing the alert.

Currently, the digital methods of alerts are all permission based. You have to sign up to receive the SMS or email. There is, as yet, no method for broadcast of these alerts on the web.

Think about all of the ad space across the web. Adwords, Banner Ads, Text ads, etc.

Think about how a banner can IP locate someone and deliver a customized message.

Think of all the remaindered advertising space across the web. Think of how much of that space is now controlled by Google through their purchase of DoubleClick.

Consider: A child gets abducted near you, and you browse the web, and banner space on your favorite site is, for a short time period (5 seconds, even), replaced with an AMBER alert with contact information.

We may be more apt to ignore that space on the site, but there is still a percentage of people that will see it and will now know of the abduction.

And that will save lives.

We need an army of voices, comprised of brands, publishers, and committed people to persuade a company like Google to make time and screen space for this project.

Together we can save a child from danger. We can reunite parent and child, we can avert one of the darkest disasters of our society, and we can stop communities from being ripped apart.

How you can help:

• Spread this post, tweet it, link to it, post it to your wall, help me assemble like-minded supporters
• Endorse this idea at Redesign Our World to help get the attention of world leaders through The Forum of Young Global Leaders, a group of The World Economic Forum
• Don’t be a lurker, don’t pass this by, don’t give in to apathy, you can help save a child

Learn more about the Redesign Our World project – my boss and UC founding Partner Josh Spear helped launch this initiative and urged me to think about ways to make the world a better place through digital means.

Related posts:

1. saving lives with a banner ad – the backstory
2. nike+ trash talk banner
3. the parallel lives of kermit and christian

Tags: amber alert, redesign our world

Trackback URI.