Climate Week: how to tackle digital advertising’s biggest sustainability challenges

Opinion, by Audrey Danthony

Sustainability often faces a significant hurdle: it’s seen as a cost rather than a strategic investment.

When the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) was shut down last month following legal action brought by Elon Musk’s X, many feared it could hinder or even derail the slow but steady progress the digital ad industry had made in tackling its oversized carbon footprint.

However, far from undermining support, it seems to have re-energised many across the ad community and their commitment to reducing ad emissions.

Within a week of GARM’s closure, Ad Net Zero (co-builder of the Global Media Sustainability Framework) — supported by other key players like IAB Europe — organised themselves to continue the momentum generated by the unveiling of the GMSF at Cannes Lions. That included ANZ taking the reins and with it the responsibility of steering the development and rollout of the new framework.

Meanwhile, IAB Europe, backed by a strong coalition of advertisers, media owners, ad tech platforms and carbon evaluation specialists such as Impact Plus, has assured members they remain as committed as ever to helping companies implement the new framework.

Such renewed enthusiasm to tackle online advertising’s impact on the planet among the industry’s biggest players is certainly encouraging.

But, as we celebrate Climate Week, there are still significant obstacles to overcome on the path to a more sustainable digital ecosystem.

The new framework still needs a lot of attention

The launch of the highly anticipated Global Media Sustainability Framework at Cannes this year was received with huge fanfare across the industry after the culmination of what has been over a year of close collaboration from parties across the length and breadth of the industry.

And with good reason. The new framework aims to standardise the way advertisers, publishers and agencies evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by their ad campaigns across different channels. It plays a crucial role in providing a common currency and language for the industry to rally behind in its mission to tackle digital advertising’s impact on the environment.

But its recent unveiling is just the first step on a much larger journey. There is still a lot of work to be done, and the framework will continue to evolve as the industry strives for more precise evaluations of emissions.

That’s because, while several media channels and their formulas are already included in the framework, some of the default key data to be used when the ideal data point isn’t available is missing. That means that everyone implementing the framework must still work using their own assumptions.

Until we have them, aligning the different methodologies available across the market continues to be a challenge. Having a unified framework won’t just help to align these ‘assumed’ values, it also opens the door to allow the industry to push to resolve how to obtain the missing data and provide ever more accurate calculations.

Getting people to stop waiting

Before the framework was announced at Cannes this year, there were a lot of people waiting until the framework was in place before doing anything.

Now, with an early iteration of the framework in place, there are concerns that people are still waiting until some of these issues are resolved. That’s despite the huge, significant progress that could be made right now on reducing the environmental impact of digital ads.

As they say, perfection is the enemy of progress and there’s no need for people to wait until every part of the framework is finalised. We have just experienced record temperatures this summer. The planet cannot wait any longer.

Plus, we are about to go into the busiest quarter of the year, where emissions typically spike.

We don’t have time to get everything right before we act and there are solutions available right now that are aligned with the new framework.

Scaling the work that needs to be done

The new framework is an essential part of the puzzle, but measurement is only one part of the solution.

The crucial part is scaling reduction across all brands’ digital advertising. A lot of brands and agencies are still experimenting with one-off campaigns rather than focusing on strategies that will establish best practices. That includes training and educating their team members on how to significantly reduce emissions across the board.

The work needs to start now to train team members and establish best practices. Marketers are not climate scientists. They need to understand how the decisions they make every day have an impact on the environment.

Shifting the perception of sustainability

Unlike short-term productivity tools, sustainability is a fundamental aspect of responsible business. It’s a matter of prioritising ethical practices and fulfilling corporate responsibilities, which can be harder to justify in a company balance sheet.

That may change following the introduction of stricter regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It makes reporting mandatory for large brands from next year, making sustainability increasingly a board-level issue.

Hopefully, this in turn will lead to companies incentivising their sustainability efforts, linking executive bonuses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals.

After all, money talks.

Audrey Danthony is chief product officer and co-founder at sustaintech platform Impact Plus