How Brands Can Reduce Carbon Emissions in Advertising?
SUSTAINABILITY IN MEDIA PLANNING
Worldwide, carbon emissions must be reduced by two-thirds over the next decade to avoid hitting a dangerous global warming threshold. The ad industry, particularly digital advertising, is a major contributor to rising carbon emissions.
Every thousand ad impressions, of which there are billions each day, emit between 50-1500+ grams of CO2 due to the energy used by data centers around the globe. One thousand impressions, then, is roughly the equivalent of taking a 10-minute drive in a standard gas-powered vehicle in terms of carbon impact — and the ad industry makes that drive billions of times per day.
With its link to research, this story first appeared on the ANA website and is now part of the joint ANA—Internationalist Marketing Makes a World of Difference initiative.
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The current ecosystem contains a great deal of both environmental and financial waste. Media decarbonization efforts work like a flashlight, shining a light on that waste and exposing opportunities to optimize your marketing. Therefore, optimizing for carbon also improves business outcomes.
Many advertisers want to take action and reap the rewards of more sustainable marketing but are unsure where to begin.
In this groundbreaking study, the ANA worked with Scope3 and major brands from the Media & Measurement Leadership Council, including Coca-Cola, GM, Kimberly Clark, Kroger, Mars, and Mondelez to determine the immediate opportunities to reduce their carbon emissions. Scope3 was used to map the carbon emissions of participating brands’ advertising campaigns, and measure the reduction they achieved by making specific, targeted adjustments.
The results prove that significant carbon emissions reduction is possible even in the early stages of practicing more sustainable advertising. What’s more, advertisers do not have to sacrifice their performance goals to make meaningful emissions improvements.
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