DECARBONISATION OF THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY
Decarbonisation is the removal and reduction of carbon dioxide output into the atmosphere. It has become a global priority for governments, businesses, and society as it plays a significant role in improving or worsening global warming. (Deloitte, n.d.). The advertising industry is a large contributor to global warming due to its extensive production of CO2 and greenhouse gases through its management practises. In total, digital advertising activities generate approximately 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions per year (MediaMath Blog, 2023); and ad energy consumption increases by 9% each year (The Shift Project, 2019). Further to this, the advertising industry is projected to add up to 28% more, to the annual carbon footprint of every global individual (Ormesher, 2022). Therefore, for this semester in BCM325 I elected to create a digital artefact that focused on bringing awareness to the advertising industries’ contribution to the current global warming crisis. As a marketing student I felt strongly inclined to educate myself on the industry I want to enter into, and explore the actions and methods required to make a significant positive environmental impact. However, as I am not yet apart of this commercial sector professionally, I instead chose to create a project that aimed to educate the individuals who are already participating in the daily functions of the advertising and marketing division. As a result, I generated both a TikTok and Pinterest page dedicated to the confronting facts about the industry’s carbon consumption and projection, as well as calling for reform surrounding harmful procedures and methods used in this area of business.
My DA included several infographics that each had a specific focus in advertising and were published to the above social media platforms. These included the facts about the extent of the advertising industries’ contribution to the global warming crisis; the countries who were the biggest factors to these rates; the businesses concentrating on lowering their impact, through decarbonisation; how businesses can contribute to the environment positively and participate in the decarbonisation initiative; and the responsibilities consumers hold in bettering this industries’ impact. I adopted the use of TikTok as there are hundreds of businesses and individuals from the advertising sector active on the site, where there is a higher possibility of them viewing my content through the For You Page. The algorithm of the For You Page works to reflect the preferences unique to each user starting from their interests declared as you sign up. As a result, the probability of my videos being pushed onto a social media managers or advertising businesses’ feed is quite high due to the nature of their profile and my published content. Further to this, Pinterest was utilised as another platform for my project as it is extreme common business practise for companies in the advertising and marketing sector to create mood boards and idea generation through this social media platform. Therefore, similar to TikTok, through the apps algorithm, my content is much higher likely to be viewed by these businesses and industry professionals. Thus, the use of these selected social media applications, directly ties to the social utility of my project to bring awareness to decarbonisation in the advertising industry and connection to global warming.
The success of my project comes through in the accurate targeting of my audience on curated social media platforms. Through this I have slowly started to accumulate followers and views to my TikTok account, and my Pinterest is also showing signs of audience optimisation. However, my project is limited by the timeline of creating these posts. Research was an extensive aspect of this digital artefact as it is wholly fact based and needed to be properly explored and evaluated. Due to the sizeable nature of this and the extent of other uni work, I was only able to produce these infographics in the last few weeks of this assignment. As a result, my project has not been live in the public space as long as it could have been, therefore, impacting the reach of my audience and the number of likes, views, and digital impressions I have retained.
Throughout my project, I have learnt that decarbonising an advertising business is not as unreachable or impossible to achieve in a timely frame as it sounds. There are several small steps the industry overall, can implement in order to lessen their worsening impact. According to Williams (2022) these include but are not limited to, embracing the carbon path optimisation by talking to vendors regarding their technological infostructures and ways to improve their methods and practises; budget teams should reward media owners who are making environmentally friendly choices with favourable monetisation, as an incentive to other brands to follow suit; revaluate the management of assets in your business to see if there are ways to improve your carbon footprint by governing and administering these otherwise; measure the carbon costs of your campaigns and their emissions in real time; innovate intelligently by choosing your underpinning technology wisely; and lastly, delivering content slightly outside of a target states highest consumption hours can significantly improve your carbon footprint by decreasing its impact.
In addition to the above, the general population can also make a difference to the carbon emissions of the advertising industry, and should opt to do so where possible, in order to improve the overall environmental impact of this operational sector. As such, consumers should endeavour to make sustainable purchases when able; reduce their device usage and explore the function of energy efficient devices instead; reduce excessive digital communication; support eco-friendly business providers; and finally, place pressure on organisations to demonstrate how their business is operating responsibly by making more sustainable choices.
Furthermore, from my digital artefact I have learnt of the extensive initiatives and brands that are endeavouring to make a difference to the ad industries’ global impact. The biggest one being the ADNETZERO initiative which has been named ‘the advertising industries’ drive to reduce the carbon impact of developing, producing, and running advertisements to a real net zero. With a 5-point action plan to provide the industry with a guide for its transition to net zero by 2030’ (Ad Net Zero, n.d.). With several significant businesses apart of their global group, AdNetZero is well striving to create plausible, positive, and impactful change in this professional sector.
To conclude, my digital artefact has been successful in achieving my defined social utility, through the publication of my newly acquired knowledge inclusive of the information above, and specifically curated social platform utilisation. Furthermore, my project trajectory is sustainable as my infographics are going to remain online, in order to continually generate new awareness to this significant carbon emission factor. Overall, this project has been successful, informative, and very beneficial in supplementing my learning and encouraging me to support net zero in all my future ventures.
Ad Net Zero. (n.d.). Advertising’s response to the climate emergency. [online] Available at: https://adnetzero.com/ [Accessed 24 May 2023].
Deloitte (n.d.). What Is decarbonisation? [online] Deloitte Netherlands. Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/energy-resources-industrials/articles/what-is-decarbonisation.html [Accessed 24 May 2023].
MediaMath Blog. (2023). Digital Advertising’s Contribution to Scope 3 Emissions. [online] Available at: https://www.mediamath.com/blog/digital-advertisings-contribution-to-scope-3-emissions/#:~:text=But%20it [Accessed 24 May 2023].
Ormesher, E. (2022). Advertising adds extra 32% to annual carbon footprint of every person in the UK. [online] The Drum. Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/11/07/advertising-adds-extra-32-annual-carbon-footprint-every-person-the-uk [Accessed 24 May 2023].
The Shift Project (2019). ‘Climate crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video’ : Our new report. [online] The Shift Project. Available at: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/ [Accessed 24 May 2023].
Williams, A. (2022). Six ways advertisers can reduce the carbon footprint of their digital media | WARC. [online] origin.warc.com. Available at: https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/six-ways-advertisers-can-reduce-the-carbon-footprint-of-their-digital-media/en-gb/5643.
