The viral ad is styled as a mock news broadcast with a voice-over by Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow. The communication was directed by Armando Iannucci, writer and director of 'I'm Alan Partridge' and 'The Thick of It', and follows a politician on the campaign trail posing with a baby from a waiting crowd, only to drop the baby once he has had his photo taken.
The new digital ads target commuters with the message that one in seven children in Britain, including 400,000 in London alone, are trying to escape homelessness or bad housing.
Imogen Wilson, spokesman for Shelter, said: "We're delighted to continue working with Leo Burnett and feel that this viral advertisement is a great way of raising awareness of overcrowding in the UK."
Shelter advertises frequently through various mediums. In March, it launched a digital London Underground campaign showing children banging on escalator panels desperate to escape their situation.
In December the charity set up a 30-metre 'wall of shame' on London's South Bank to draw attention to its call on Chancellor Gordon Brown to fund an extra 20,000 social rented homes a year.
A sequence of projections, using the wall as a surface, showed the plight of children and their families living in bad housing, and included children reading poems about their experiences.