Talking can produce a lot of hot air – and the time for just talking about sustainability has passed.
In 2023, the marketing industry added sustainability to its list of talking points. In 2024, marketers and their partners will work on measurement standards and move toward accountability.
“There’s been so much talking,” said Claire Gleeson-Landry, head of investment and sustainable media at sustainable advertising startup Good-Loop. “I am really hopeful that [this] year becomes the year of doing something.”
Within the programmatic ad-buying space, the focus is on reducing scope 3 emissions, which refer to emissions produced by partners across the supply chain, as opposed to direct emissions produced by the reporting company.
Startups such as Good-Loop, Cedara, SeenThis and Scope3 (which was founded by ad tech veteran Brian O’Kelley) help measure the carbon footprint of online advertising – but there still isn’t an agreed-upon framework that fosters collaboration to reduce the ad industry’s environmental impact on the planet.
That will change this year.
It always starts with data
Although the threat of climate change has been looming for decades, its negative impact felt far off for many.
But an uptick in climate-related weather disasters has finally started to create a sense of much-needed urgency.
The push toward sustainability goals, not unlike the DEI push in recent years, is also being propelled by consumer priorities. As consumers become more keyed into the effects of climate change, they want to see action from the brands they support.
One way advertisers, agencies and their ad tech partners can take action is by measuring emissions, creating carbon benchmarks and sharing that data across the industry.
To make informed decisions, “every single player in the ecosystem needs to have data at their fingertips – and not just siloed data,” said Anne Coghlan, COO and co-founder of Scope3.
For its part, Scope3 is helping establish that baseline for the media industry by sharing emissions data for ad delivery across publishers, ad platforms and tech providers.
In September, Scope3 made its carbon emissions data open to the public so anyone can see which companies are making progress with their carbon goals – and which are falling short.
“Data sharing needs to be collaborative,” Coghlan said. “When, in this really complex web of interconnection, one player takes action, that [should] be seen and recognized by others.”
Looking for the low-hanging fruit
But data collection is only a step in the process.
It’s one thing to set emissions goals, but they also need to be realistic, said Gleeson-Landry.
“You can only do that if you’re continually measuring and tinkering with aspects of your campaigns,” she said, “and constantly assessing new players that come to the market.”
It’s OK to make mistakes along the way, however.
Compared to 2021, approaches to sustainability look completely different today, she added. Most likely, we’ll look back a year from now, and things will have changed even further.
“Perfection is really limiting because everything is evolving,” Gleeson-Landry said.
For example, although there isn’t quite enough data available yet to compare every business in the ad industry equally, ad buyers can start to hold their partners accountable, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships and a managing partner at GroupM, WPP’s media-buying arm.
Take made-for-advertising sites. Their high ad density, over-the-top ad loads and frequent refresh rates generate high emissions and a poor customer experience. Cutting them from the media plan makes sense for multiple reasons.
Another place to examine, Taylor said, is continuous play issues in CTV, which is when impressions continue to serve even when a TV is off. Advertisers are primarily concerned about this issue because it messes with viewability and campaign measurement, but running ads that no one sees is also a sustainability problem.
Research from iSpot.tv and GroupM, which are working with other media organizations to create standards to account for continuous play, found that between 8% and 10% of impressions are delivered when TVs are off.
Don’t left perfect get in the way
Still, substantive change won’t come to the ad industry without setting standards.
Yet not every media owner, advertiser and ad tech company is in the same place in their sustainability journeys. Some haven’t even begun to evaluate their emissions, scope 3 or otherwise, Taylor said.
Before any sort of standard can be set, the media industry needs to align on best practices.
“You treasure what you measure,” said Taylor, adding that, in the absence of consistent regulatory oversight, industry-specific self-regulatory standards are “absolutely fundamental.”
But it can be overwhelming to even know where to start.
Sustainability is still considered niche among many brands and agencies, and expertise in the field is lacking. But as they learn more about sustainability, it will become another necessary campaign metric to measure, just like ad fraud or brand safety, Gleeson-Landry said.
Standard bearers
With so much demand for a media sustainability framework, it’s not surprising that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is taking the reins.
GARM was originally founded by members of the World Federation of Advertisers to develop industry standards for brand safety and suitability.
The group is now working in partnership with trade organization Ad Net Zero to hammer out a common framework to measure the greenhouse gas impact of media placements across channels.
These standards should be available to share with the wider industry sometime next year, according to GARM’s co-founder, Robert Rakowitz. (Keep your ears open during Cannes 2024 for an update.)
GARM is also creating streamlined processes to help buyers and sellers exchange sustainability-related information.
To support the initiative, GARM has assembled a group comprised of sustainability science client leads and experts. “People shouldn’t be competing on things like on sustainability,” Rakowitz said. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to have the options for transparency and control.”
Until standards are in place, however, the industry will remain in a holding pattern of sorts, said Scope3’s Coghlan.
But she urged the ad industry not to drag its heels.
“Lots of people are holding their breath and waiting to do something to reduce the carbon footprint of their advertising emissions,” Coghlan said. “We can’t be waiting another year for standards to emerge.”
