As a conversation starter and attention grabber, UNICEF launched the world’s first banner directed only to people with ad blockers installed. The targeted ad blocking audience was approached with a simple message: “Children’s rights should never be blocked. Help us make their voices heard. Sign up for children’s right to complain here.” And we directed the ones who clicked on the banner to our petition site.

We approached DN.se, the largest Swedish morning daily, with our idea to direct a banner only to people with ad blockers installed. To disguise the banner from ad blocker attention, we stripped it of sound, animation and tracking scripts. We got the top front space on DN.se for our banner, and it would only be visible to visitors with ad blockers installed. The banner ran for a week, starting from October 21.

The banner directed our target group to a site, where we had the plea to be signed and additional UNICEF information on children’s right to complain, such as background information and pod cast episodes where affected children shared their own stories. We also had a special pod cast where the children’s minister of Government, Åsa Regnér, was interviewed on the topic by one of the most famous Swedish pod casters, Kristoffer Triumf.

UNICEF’s innovative approach to market an important message got praise in both Swedish and International media and awoke discussions on blogs, forums and amongst journalists. Our pod episodes reached the Swedish top charts. The banner had an amazing click through rate of 3 percent amongst unique visitors during the period, 300 percent higher than an ordinary CTR for a text based banner. The conversion rate to our plea was a staggering 10 percent.

Media quotes:

“UNICEF claims ad blockers may be blocking children’s rights” – Mashable

“The ad may even guilt users into taking action” – Contagious

“The results of this campaign were amazing” – Trendhunter

Wall Street Journal claimed the banner to be one of the best campaigns 2015.

In an ad free environment UNICEF invented a way for the most selective audience online to pay attention, and get engaged.