Donation Icons.

The world’s smallest and smartest advertising space.

Donation Icons is a completely new charitable media space. The world-first technology is installed through an application for OSX and Windows. Once installed, your desktop and folder icons turn into media spaces for global brands to advertise in. Brands pay to use that space and every penny goes to Oxfam. You donate the space, brands donate the money.

The smart icons update throughout the day, showing time-dependent messages, ads targeted to country or area, even limited-time offers. These ads can be direct-response - and through a tab in their taskbar, users can view offers, see how much they’re raising and learn about Oxfam’s work.

The Donation Icons application allows brands to create topical messages (e.g. rolling out messages at certain times of the day or certain dates) as well as allowing them to create promotional offers and direct response promos. This targeting means brands pay a little more for the space, which of course means we can raise more money to end poverty.

For users, they just need to install it from our website – DonationIcons.com. It’s as simple as that. It’ll then run automatically in the background and check the server for icons updates (such as promo offers) at specified times. The user doesn’t do (or need to spend) a thing.

With the launch of Donation Icons in 2016, we’re only just discovering the potential of this new media space. With our first brand partners confirmed, the first donations received and an existing user base growing every day, Donation Icons could reach the 4 billion people that access a computer every single day. They might only be 96x96 pixels, but they have the potential to change the world.

Visit DonationIcons.com to sign up for the beta.

The Donation Icons application is a world-first technology and charitable media platform. The technology turns desktop icons into a smart media space for brands – allowing brands to serve time-dependant messages, ads targeted to a user’s location, even time-dependant offers and promotions direct to customer’s desktops.

We haven’t just invented an advertising campaign that is a great use of media; we’ve invented an entirely new media. A media that has the potential to target the 1 trillion people across the globe with a computer.

“Extreme Poverty has been halved in just 15 years. It’s small ingenious solutions like Donation Icons that will help us end extreme poverty in the next 15.” Jack Lundie, Oxfam Director of Communications

In a world where online advertising is often seen as invasive, where users are disengaged and where ad-blockers are becoming ever more prevalent – our strategy of creating advertising that encourages users to opt-in is a radical solution. Users are happy to see the ads, because they know that they’re helping to raise money for charity.

Oxfam Worldwide were looking for new streams of income. With donations on the decline, they needed a new way to fund their live-saving work.

Our insight was simple: across the globe, we spend on average seven hours a day looking at computer screens. During this time we view thousands of file icons. But what if all of these views were worth something? What if they could be used to raise money for charity?