ANA, Scope3 Urge Industry to Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Hampering Ad Performance

Global carbon emissions must be lowered by two-thirds over the next decade to avoid reaching a dangerous global warming threshold, the Association of National Advertisers cautioned in its new “Sustainability in Media Planning” report, adding that the ad industry—particularly digital ads—is a major contributor to those emissions. With Climate Week NYC taking place this week, the ANA teamed up with sustainable adtech company Scope3 on a deep dive into the carbon cost of digital marketing and how brands can measure it and respond. Major brands Coca-Cola, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Mars, and Mondelēz International participated in the study and saw their emissions reduced by as much as 38%, and those brands reaped benefits such as redistributing their ad spend to high-quality sites, reaching their key performance indicators faster, and avoiding overextended budgets from attempting to reach consumers via bad inventory. “What we found through this is that significant carbon emissions reduction is possible even in the early stages of practicing more sustainable advertising, and advertisers do not have to sacrifice their performance goals or increase ad costs to make meaningful emissions improvements,” ANA senior vice president and media and measurement initiative lead Jason Trubowitz said in a statement. The ANA study was broken up into four parts: The carbon cost of digital ads The ANA said there are billions of ad impressions each day, and every 1,000 emit between 50 and 1,500-plus grams of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of driving 10 minutes in a standard gas-powered vehicle. The trade group added that every minute spent consuming social video emits roughly 2.6 grams of carbon and, with the average person watching one hour of social video per day, one person’s weekly emissions from time spent on social video applications are equivalent to charging 66 smartphones. The impact brands can make on emissions The path to sustainable advertising begins with brands measuring their carbon emissions so that they can focus on taking action to reduce them. The ANA said an ideal first step is gaining the transparency needed to visualize media emissions, waste, and performance, stressing the importance of real-time, activity-based emissions data, including real-time grid mix data and real-time campaign delivery data. Its checklist includes the site or app where the impression is served, the volume of impressions served by that site or app, the date and/or hour when the ad is served, and supplementary data inputs (creative size, length of video, network connection, device type). How big brands are making progress on sustainability Working with Scope3 alerted the brands listed above to the top contributing factors to high emissions, which included unnecessary complexity in the digital supply chain, like extra technology partners and a high number of “hops,” or stops an ad makes across the supply path, as well as emissions from data transferred during peak grid mix usage and over relevant networks. The study found that a small number of websites and apps were responsible for the majority of emissions, explaining that 2% of all sites targeted in brand campaigns drove 50% of emissions. The participating brands were able to take this information and identify areas of high carbon emissions, determine how campaign performance and emissions interacted, and make optimization decisions that slashed emissions while impacting performance as little as possible. The three main steps taken by those brands were: Adopting green media products, or private marketplaces that automatically select for low-emissions inventory; updating inclusion lists to only target lower-emitting inventory; and optimizing inclusion lists to remove any identifiable bad actors. What marketers can do now The ANA suggested that brands: Adopt tools to reduce emissions. Choose an activity-based measurement model. Adopt automated green media solutions. Eliminate MFA (made for advertising) inventory.

Sustainability News

ANA, Scope3 Urge Industry to Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Hampering Ad Performance

Coca-Cola, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Mars, Mondelēz International participated in the study

David Cohen

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