The Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and agencies of the United States government.
The Ad Council partners with advertising agencies who work pro bono to create the public service advertisements on behalf of their campaigns. The organization accepts requests from sponsor institutions for advertising campaigns that focus on particular social issues. To qualify, an issue must be non-partisan (though not necessarily unbiased) and have national relevance.
The Ad Council distributes the advertisements to a network of 33,000[6] media outlets—including broadcast, print, outdoor (i.e. billboards, bus stops), and Internet—who run the ads in donated time and space. Media outlets donate approximately $1.8 billion to Ad Council campaigns annually.[7] If paid for, this amount would make the Ad Council one of the largest advertisers in the country.