The availability of expert advice for brand marketing teams aiming to demonstrate sustainability commitment is abundant, as highlighted by Google’s research indicating that 66% of consumers actively seek eco-friendly brands. However, skepticism prevails among 72% of survey participants who believe that companies exaggerate their sustainability efforts.
This skepticism can benefit brands taking genuine actions, as tangible steps towards emissions reduction become a distinguishing factor when reporting results. Industry leaders from major brands emphasize the integration of climate action into digital ad campaign strategies, showcasing a variety of models available for designing sustainability-focused campaigns.
Sustainability driven campaigns
Digital ads are composed of more than visuals, including trackers, pixels, and code for measuring and gathering data. These elements can cause substantial network traffic and strain CPUs if set up poorly, leading to a negative user experience. To counter this, adopting dark mode or dimming bright content can significantly cut emissions and improve site performance.
Sustainable tracking
Part of the carbon emissions associated with display and video campaigns arises from delivering and executing content on user devices. Optimizing creative elements’ size and compression reduces emissions. Server-side tagging and data clean rooms like Ads Data Hub further enhance sustainability by reducing tracker use and enabling secure data integration.
Efficient ad campaigns
Likewise, tools such as Campaign Manager 360 and Display & Video 360 enable teams to conduct A/B testing on different versions, assessing factors like viewability, time on screen, and other attention-related metrics. This approach eliminates unnecessary impressions, leading to enhanced sustainability, lower costs and performance.
Sustainable websites
Riccardo Menoncin, design lead at EssilorLuxottica, emphasized the significance of balancing ecological efforts with high standards for a seamless user experience at Arnette. To enhance website performance, tools like Squoosh from Google Chrome Labs help cross-functional teams optimize images and maintain user-friendly websites.
Sustainable mobility
When crafting ad campaign assets, the carbon footprint should be considered, prompting a Google marketing team to infuse sustainability into a Google Ads acquisition campaign. They reused and reformatted previous assets and adopted eco-friendly measures, like using trains instead of flights for travel. Within Europe, flight travel emits, on average, 5X to 6X more carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometre than train travel. These choices diverted an estimated 500 kilograms of carbon emissions per crew member, according to Google Flights, and cut creative costs by 55%.
Reusing assets
When possible, reusing assets across campaigns is an easy way to avoid waste. Versioning an ad is often an easy way to get more mileage out of successful creatives.
Innovative companies
Publishers have put in significant effort to decrease the carbon footprint of their digital platforms, including advertising infrastructure, aiming for better performance and sustainability. French electricity provider EDF is using Display & Video 360 to enhance media efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, achieving a 17% decrease in cost per conversion and an estimated 13% reduction in emissions through optimized campaign performance.
“For EDF, embodying corporate responsibility extends to practicing responsible communication,” said Ismaïl Berrada, acquisition manager at EDF.
Ad Net-Zero initiative
For those aiming to make practical contributions to climate efforts, the advertising industry offers examples of operational changes. The Ad Net Zero initiative, a global plan to reduce carbon emissions in advertising, now offers more opportunities than ever for sharing knowledge, inspiration, and industry-wide response to the challenge.
