Advertising Against Adversity

Inspiration

Advertising is intrusive, inefficient, and ignored. Users are forced to watch ads, advertisers pay for low-quality impressions, and charities depend on inconsistent donations. We wanted to build an ethical alternative where attention is voluntary and valuable.

What it does

An opt-in advertising platform where users choose to display small popup ads. Advertisers pay per verified view, and revenue is split transparently:

50% to users

30% to charity

20% to the platform

How we built it

We built a Chrome extension to display ads and verify active attention, a website for advertisers to upload ads, and a Firebase backend to store ads and track real-time impact metrics.

Challenges we ran into

Verifying real user attention without invading privacy, and designing a revenue split that is both ethical and sustainable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A working opt-in ad system, verified attention tracking, real-time impact stats, and a complete end-to-end MVP.

What we learned

Ethical advertising is possible when incentives are aligned and transparency is built into the system.

What's next for Advertising Against Adversity

Add payments, strengthen anti-bot protection, onboard real charities and advertisers, and pilot the platform at scale.