Happy Nice Mall

Most of the ads are run by the “news and media website”. Ukrainian Warothers are managed by a “social media agency” Safe Ukraine. They contain emotional videos Captive Russian soldiers who tearfully called their families home to reveal the truth of what war was like, along with texts urging Russians to raise their voices against the war. The project is led by Bohdana, 33, from Lutsk, a city in northwest Ukraine, who refuses to share her surname.

Another grassroots campaign is organized by the Ukrainian arm of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). “We are trying to tell more about the real situation, because in Russia there is very tight control over information and there is no independent media,” says Anastasiya Baydachenko, CEO of IAB Ukraine.

During the first week of the war, the Ukrainian ad industry’s campaign largely operated on Google’s ad network – but it has recently hit the bumpers with Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor’s demand that Russia stop spreading what it describes as “disinformation” about itself. activities in Russia. on March 4, Google accepted this requestis temporarily stopping the ability to book ads in Russia. “The situation is developing rapidly,” the company said in a statement.

This action upset some of the plans of the IAB-supported group. However, Baydachenko claims that Roskomnadzor’s decision to block ads is a sign of the effectiveness of the IAB campaign.

The campaign, where multiple different accounts each spent a small amount of money with Google to target demographics likely to include mothers of Russian soldiers, will now migrate to Yandex. “We understand that Yandex is high risk because of its control,” he says. “So that’s why it’s a remote possibility, but we’re going to try to do that to get our messages.”

Baydachenko says there were about four or five other Ukrainian initiatives led by groups that were independently established in the early days of the war. “We are all trying to reach Russian audiences with different messages,” he says.

The IAB’s campaign is funded by private companies as well as donations and sponsors who are willing to draw large sums to try to overcome the horrors of what is happening in Ukraine at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s military. “The owners of Ukrainian businesses understand that there is a crisis here,” says Baydachenko. “They are prepared to spend $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or $50,000 to communicate and bring information to Russia,” he said.

According to Baydachenko’s estimates, a total of 10 million hryvnia ($330,000) was spent last week on Ukraine-based advertising campaigns trying to provide more honest information to Russia. This is all that Agnes Venema, an academic for national security and intelligence at the University of Malta, calls “the 2022 version of the underground newspaper.” “People have learned that they can beat Putin at his own game by defying disinformation that any Russian with an internet connection will let see,” she says.