From various reports, including Deloitte’s Spend Report(link)and the IAB Europe Sustainability Report 2023(link)we see that sustainability is one of the most important themes for marketers. Initially, emissions were mainly discussed in relation to offline channels like print advertising, but it appears that the digital advertising industry also contributes significant CO2 emissions. This is summarized in the Scope3 report. In this blog, we will primarily focus on CO2 emissions within programmatic advertising, where they mostly come from and how things currently stand, so we can offer you concrete advice on what to do. At Draft, we believe that a sustainable marketing strategy can also lead to improved performance.

The Research

Scope3 conducted research in Australia, France, the UK, Germany, and the US to measure CO2 emissions across different advertising stages, ad creation, device usage by consumers, hosting, and ad delivery. A new metric called gCO2pm was introduced, measuring grams of CO2 emitted per 1,000 impressions. Key findings include:

By Country

The US has the lowest relative emissions, while Germany has the highest. Although the US emits the most overall, differences between countries are relatively small, which makes sense given the widespread use of international programmatic tools like Google and Xandr. For context, billions of impressions are served daily, and 1,000 impressions equal roughly one load of laundry. 

By Publisher

Emissions vary widely by publisher, ranging from 187 to 1,772 gCO2pm, compared to 511 to 631 by country. Publishers with sites primarily designed for ads (MFA sites) score poorly in emissions, as do sites with low editorial value or fraudulent activity. Steering your strategy away from such sites can reduce emissions. MFA sites typically show:

• High ad density
• Mostly clickbait content
• Traffic largely from paid channels

On average, MFA sites emit 13% more CO2. 

Programmatic Process Stages: How to Practice Sustainable Marketing

The programmatic process consists of four stages:

Ad Selection

The supply path where ads are traded, including SSPs, data sources, and targeting tools. 

Creative Distribution

Emissions linked to producing the ad, like banner creation and involved suppliers. 

Media Distribution

Total emissions associated with media delivery, including company emissions, data transfer, and electricity grid impact.

Consumer Device

The time consumers spend viewing ads on their devices. 

As expected, Ad Selection and its related processes generate the most emissions. Real-time bidding depends on many parties (SSPs, DSPs, Ad Servers, data providers). The prevalent open market strategy triggers many tool requests for each bid offer, multiplying system emissions. However, there are ways to reduce these. 

Steering Towards CO2 Reduction: Positive Results

A Scope 3 study found that pausing the top 10% highest-emitting sites led to positive results, a 1.4% increase in completion rate and a 9.9% reduction in emissions. This illustrates how CO2-focused steering can benefit performance.

Sustainable Marketing and Emission Reduction in the Dutch Market 

The Dutch market is also making progress to reduce emissions. Agencies are increasingly tracking their media’s carbon footprint to foster conversations and action. DPG Media is developing a self-serve platform that integrates with their tools to limit tool use and reduce emissions. Adform is working to incorporate emission studies in their DSP, automatically excluding MFA and other high-emission sites. These tools help advertisers steer toward sustainable marketing.

What Can You Do to Create a Sustainable Marketing Strategy? 

Reducing emissions can be challenging, especially for smaller agencies and advertisers. Conducting a CO2 audit of your programmatic supply path can be costly and may not be feasible for all. However, there are steps you can take:

Sharpen your whitelist

As mentioned earlier in this article, MFA sites emit 13% more CO2 than the average website, making it a simple choice to reduce emissions by excluding them. It might be wise to first conduct a domain analysis to assess the impact of excluding these domains. However, we have found that the quality of these sites is often lower since their traffic mainly comes from paid advertising. The value of remaining on these sites is relatively low. 

If you’re not already using a whitelist, Draft strongly advises you to start. The internet is vast, with thousands of websites, making it impossible to monitor whether your ads appear on trustworthy sites without a whitelist.

Prevent Fraud

Fraudulent sites also contribute significantly to emissions, and this is something that can be identified. In 2022, NOS published an article revealing that tens of billions are lost annually due to fraud. Additionally, fraudulent impressions hold no value, and excluding them can lead to improved performance. Therefore, addressing fraud is a logical and important step.

Ways to do this include:

• Use brand safety settings available in various DSPs.
• Utilize anti-fraud detection tools like DoubleVerify or MOAT. Always evaluate whether these tools continue to add value over time, and discontinue use if they don’t.
• Implement a stricter whitelist.

Take Inventory of Your Current Advertising Stack

Take a critical look at the tools currently under your management and evaluate the added value of each. Are all these tools still necessary to keep in use? 

Engage in Conversations with Partners

Even if you don’t have insight into the footprint of your digital ads, it can still be worthwhile to engage in conversations with your partners. They may have this information and be able to help optimize it.

Analyze Your Buying Strategy

Even if you don’t have the footprint of your digital ads, it can still be valuable to start a conversation with your partners. They might have this insight and be able to help steer it.

Ambition for the Dutch Market

Since this topic is relevant for the entire market, it would be logical for industry organizations to take the lead in analyzing what is and isn’t emitting, so all advertisers and agencies can benefit. This approach also enables smaller parties to contribute and ensures the entire market views this major societal issue consistently.

Want to learn more about sustainability in media? get in touch with us .

Mental Availability

To be relevant and impactful in the long term, it is necessary for the consumer to think of you in certain processes. Peter Field calls this mental availability. If you build this, the likelihood of your brand being chosen is greater, enabling growth. Therefore, ensure that your brand also evokes a certain thought among your target audience. Examples of brands that excel in this are Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple.

Coca-Cola: This brand is omnipresent, from TV commercials and billboards to packaging in supermarkets. Coca-Cola is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, and it is always in people's minds.

Nike: This brand is associated with sport and performance. Nike products are often seen on athletes and at sporting events. This helps keep the brand in people's minds.

Apple: This brand is associated with innovation and design. Apple products are often seen with celebrities and high-status individuals. This helps position the brand as exclusive and desirable.

It's also interesting that Peter Field shows that Mental Availability contributes to all business metrics. So, it not only affects branding but also sales KPIs.

A blend of Branding & Activation

Another interesting insight is that there should be a blend between performance and branding. Some brands prefer to focus on one of these pillars, but research shows that the combination of brand and activation actually strengthens overall business performance. Therefore, ensure that your teams collaborate effectively and always look for synergy between teams. Branding teams are often structured differently and focus on different KPIs, but it can be beneficial to align these KPIs. This way, activation benefits from branding, and vice versa.

Be creative, consistent, and evoke emotion.

Creativity is one of the key drivers of marketing success, so it's important to adhere to marketing rules closely. Peter Field demonstrated that there are certainly best practices when it comes to creativity.

First and foremost, it is crucial to carefully consider emotion in a creation. Emotion appears to perform more than 3 times better than rational messages. This is also important to take into account in channel selection. Some channels are less suitable for an emotional message than others. Audiovisual channels are often well-suited for conveying an emotional message.

Furthermore, it is crucial to be consistent in your creation and ensure that people remember you. This can be achieved by using Distinctive Brand Assets in your creation. Examples of these are:

• Characters: M&M's characters, Ronald McDonald, the Geico gecko
• Slogans: “Got milk?”, “Just do it”, “I’m Lovin’ It”
• Jingles: “The jingle that goes on and on and on”, “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, “Pepsi, the choice of a new generation”
• Visual cues: The Nike swoosh, the Apple logo, the McDonald's red arch

Research shows that brands using clear DBAs have approximately 30% more market share and profitability. Don't you want that too?

Lastly, it's very important to be creative within creation. Therefore, be sure to use automation, but don't overdo it. Award-winning work performs more than 10 times better than non-award-winning work.

The 60/40 rule is not always a reality

In the past, many marketers used the 60/40 rule. This means that you should invest 40% of the marketing budget in activation, while 60% should be invested in branding. This rule is still applicable for many marketers, but it seems to vary by market. For example, within B2B labels, less branding is needed, and the ratio is almost equal between branding and sales. Remarkably, the financial sector will have to invest 80% in brand building. This may be due to the fact that there are fewer opportunities to have USPs. A bank is simply a bank.

Additionally, an interesting observation has been made that the maturity of companies is also crucial for the balance between brand and sales. Emerging companies will need to focus much more on activation, while brand leaders may not need to do so as much. Likely, emerging brands have less preference, making activations essential to drive sales.

Insight into channels

Finally, and this is also a very interesting insight to immediately act upon, they found that there are various channels that perform very well. Currently, brand budgets often go to visual mediums such as TV and increasingly online video, but radio also seems to perform very well. There are therefore many opportunities here given the inflation on TV and online video, and especially scarcity. The research shows that brands using radio achieve more market share, greater pricing power, and higher profits and ROI.

In short, the marketing landscape is constantly changing, and these insights help you to get more return on your investments, both in branding and performance. What is clear is that these disciplines cannot work separately and that the collaboration between branding and performance is very important.