Ankara-based mobile games developer and publisher APPS has won an award at Google App Summit 2023 in the Social Impact category. Google rewarded APPS for utilizing AdMob strategies in its games to raise awareness and money for the survivors of the devastating Kahramanmaras earthquakes of magnitudes 7.8 and 7.6.
By creating a call-to-action video with a link to non-governmental organizations for donations and integrating it into its games, APPS shared a message on LinkedIn and encouraged other studios to join the effort. APPS reached more than 300,000 people, including the USA, and directed 80,000 of them directly to the help pages of NGOs. Google took notice of the campaign and shared a blog post titled “Using AdMob campaigns to help charities worldwide” based on APPS success in March 2023.
Erdem Lafci, Co-Founder and CEO of APPS, said, “After we got over the initial shock of the incident, we decided to use our games to spread the word for help all over the world and raise awareness and donations. We gave up on a portion of our income, but the impact was much greater. We’re not sure what the real impact is as we can’t keep track of their donations, but we’d be happy if we could get someone to donate just a few Euros.”
Founded in 2014, APPS developed B2B mobile applications in its first years, shifting to mobile gaming in 2017. The company has released seven games, reaching over 150 million downloads.
