Adam Elman is a globally recognised sustainability leader with over 18 years of experience. As Google's Director of Sustainability for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, he identifies and implements strategic initiatives to further the company's sustainability goals.
As the global regulatory landscape for sustainability evolves, marketers are facing a data dilemma.
Emissions reporting requirements taking effect across the European Union call for a more sophisticated, data-driven approach to measuring emissions generated from marketing activities.
Consumer sentiment is also shifting, with 4 in 10 European consumers “occasionally or regularly” thinking about sustainability and climate change when shopping.
Getting the fundamentals right with first-party data
Change is coming fast. As more companies move beyond the early stages of strategy setting, the number of businesses taking action towards estimating digital ad emissions is keeping pace with growing demand.
“As digital advertising stakeholders continue to consider their environmental impact, we’re seeing increasing signs of maturity across the ecosystem,” said Dimitris Beis, data analyst and sustainability lead at IAB Europe.
“Our research indicates that about half of businesses in the ecosystem are estimating the impact of digital media products and most of these have reported figures to clients.”
To help advertisers better measure and manage their carbon emissions, Google has announced Carbon Footprint for Google Ads. This provides first-party data to marketers to help track campaign emissions within Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Google Ads.
Carbon Footprint for Google Ads provides marketers with carbon emissions reporting data developed in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and Ad Net Zero’s Global Media Sustainability Framework.
As a founding member of Ad Net Zero, Google has participated in the industry working groups focused on developing this framework for estimating emissions across media channels using media industry and climate science standards.
Carbon Footprint is now available upon request to select large scale advertisers and will become more widely available in the future.
Building a strategy for greater effectiveness
For marketers prioritising sustainability, measurement is foundational to establishing marketing priorities and net zero goals that are both actionable and effective. Integrating sustainability principles into your marketing and measurement strategy has the potential to help drive business value and meet demand for net zero action.
Brands and agencies at the forefront of this kind of innovation are already taking action. With newly established standards for measuring carbon emissions across media channels, some marketers have already begun incorporating carbon impact into media planning. To help enable such efforts, Google has been working with brand and agency partners to unlock first-party data for sustainability marketing measurement.
Measurement is foundational to establishing marketing priorities and net zero goals that are both actionable and effective
“We discovered from our pilot of Carbon Footprint for Google Ads that the old spend-based approach to measuring the carbon footprint of our marketing massively overestimated emissions,” said Ben Carter, chief customer and marketing officer at Carwow. “This made them seem disproportionately high compared to other business activities, like business travel or office energy use.”
He continued: “Now, using much more precise first-party activity data, we can see that our carbon emissions from Google Ads are much smaller than our initial estimates. This means we can now rebalance the priorities of our overall carbon reduction strategy.”
Enhance your measurement with AI insights
While media carbon measurement can help you to gain a deeper understanding of the environmental impact of your marketing activities, resources like Google’s Sustainability Marketing Playbook provide tips on infusing sustainability principles into your creative development and campaign execution process.
According to a recent analysis of green ad creative, ads that combine sustainability and brand messaging perform more strongly, with an average increase of 54% on Ipsos’ overall creative effectiveness performance index.
Already, AI-driven solutions are proving that more sustainable media and ad performance are not mutually exclusive. AI tools like Insights Finder also make it easier for marketers to more effectively uncover opportunities to align ad creative with eco-friendly consumer habits.
The journey towards more sustainable marketing is a race that cannot be run alone. We, as marketers, have a powerful opportunity to go beyond mere compliance and redefine the very role of brands in the lives of consumers.
AI-driven solutions are proving that more sustainable media and ad performance are not mutually exclusive
By embracing data-driven approaches and working collaboratively, we can build a more sustainable future that better serves people, businesses, and the planet.
