Climate change continues to be a serious concern as rising temperatures set yearly heat records and ocean temperatures set off alarm bells for climate scientists, per recent reporting by Axios. For American consumers, sustainability is increasingly top of mind with more than 75% saying a sustainable lifestyle is important to them, and worth paying more for, according to recent findings released by McKinsey. In parallel, companies of all types are reckoning with whether and how they’re contributing to the environmental problems – or solutions – that will critically impact the next several generations.
Advertisers’ role in addressing the climate crisis has recently come into sharper focus — whether raising awareness of the issues, or the carbon impact of the industry’s standard operating procedures. Our 2H-2022 Trust in Advertising report found that sustainability is one of the top three brand values that marketing organizations are getting behind, alongside DE&I and mental health.
For an industry that specializes in generating awareness, raising collective consciousness of climate-related problems and solutions has been a go-to strategy for most advertisers, promoting their companies’ environmental commitments and specific means of achieving them.
But increasingly, climate conscious activists are on the lookout for “greenwashing” — the practice of highlighting so-called green programs that represent a small and misleading fraction of the overall environmental impact of a company’s business practices. For marketers and advertisers, paying more than lip service to sustainability means re-examining the carbon impact of advertising itself. Case in point, Scope3‘s Q1 2023 State of Sustainable Advertising report found that programmatic advertising alone produces the equivalent of 24 million gallons of gasoline per month.
Advertisers in our study reported that they’ve already started taking steps to decarbonize their practices by educating employees and producing less physical material like promotional items and collateral. They’re also increasingly vetting media and ad tech companies for their carbon impact.
In fact, environmental impact assessment within the media supply chain is already being operationalized. This year, GroupM rolled out a tool that measures the carbon footprint of its clients’ media buys across various channels, and the IAB is also creating a supply path initiative to accelerate industry decarbonization.
Regardless of where companies sit in the ad ecosystem — buy-side, sell-side, or the ad tech underpinnings — having sustainability bonafides built into standard practices will soon become the rule more than the exception. Alongside more public-facing initiatives and related marketing campaigns, decarbonization will play a significant role in determining where ad dollars flow, in 2024 and beyond.
Sarah Bolton is EVP Business Intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions
