by Adrian Muller Most of us perform a lot Web searches. In fact, American internet users alone pose about 4 billion queries per month, which generate most of the revenues in Internet advertising. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, in 2006 alone, the industry earned $16.9 billion. Melbourne-based Ripple has recently launched and Internet search engine that leverages the market for Internet advertising to make fighting poverty as easy as searching the Web. Users earn money for one of the four charitable causes simply by conducting their daily searches from the Ripple page (powered by Google) or by clicking on a ‘Give Panel’ located in the Ripple homepage. In the first case, a portion of any revenue earned by Google from the search is directed to Ripple, which passes 100% of this amount directly on to one of the four charities they have selected to help fight global poverty. In the second case, people can add between one and five cents to a cause just by visiting the website and viewing an advertiser’s message (Wishlist.com, AMP, Microsoft and Western Union so far). Right now the beneficiaries include the Oxfam Foundation, Oaktree Australia, WaterAid and the Grameen Foundation. All… (more)
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Philanthropy at 7:36 AM)