Tom Peterson

Tom Peterson is a former advertising executive who founded Virtue Media, a media-based anti-abortion ad service.

Peterson is the President and Founder of catholicscomehome.org, as well as Virtue Media. He is a 25-year ad executive who served hundreds of corporate clients. After a men's retreat with his church in 1997, he converted to Catholicism and established catholicscomehome.org and Virtue Media, a non-profit advertising firm dedicated to Catholic evangelization.

The Roswell, GA based non-profit ran it's first television campaign with the Diocese of Phoenix in January 1999. Statisticians from Arizona State University attributed +12% increase in mass attendance during the following months while 92,000 lapsed Catholics came back to the church as a result of this media campaign.

In the past decade, Tom has made appearances as a speaker at the U.S. and Australian Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pontifical Councils at The Vatican. His videos were featured on the jumbotrons at the Papal Mass in Washington, D.C. and the National Prayer Breakfast.

Method of Operation
Peterson creates television ads that urge lapsed Catholics to return to the Church. He then sells the ads to church parishes which raise the money to buy the commercials so they run them in their own areas to help increase church attendance. In 2010, for example, the Catholic Diocese of Savannah, Georgia raised $160,000 to air the commercials throughout its 90 counties, including Richmond and Columbia. With only 1 in 10 Americans identifying as former Catholic and church attendance waning, the market for such ads is growing.

Sourcewatch resources

 * Virtue Media