The ad industry grapples with going green

Profits, purpose and peer pressure.

Those were some of the factors advertising professionals said will likely drive their industry to accept a more sustainable future during the second annual Green Media Summit last week, hosted by Sharethrough, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York.

The summit gathered industry experts and executives to break down the importance of measuring and limiting carbon emissions, and how the industry can adopt the best practices more widely. In case you’re wondering what emissions in the ad industry look like, examples include: servers, cloud computing, data transmission and distribution of content, according to Sharethrough.

Deva Bronson, EVP and global head of brand assurance at Dentsu, said the ad industry is often attracted to the “new shiny thing,” including sustainability — but it “can’t afford to put this one down.”

There are signs of progress since last year’s inaugural event. For instance, Matthew Cullinen, VP of global sustainability at HSBC Bank, boasted that the company aims to reach net zero by 2030 and that 50% of its energy already comes from renewables.

Some speakers also acknowledged that there is plenty of room for progress. The industry has to overcome a few hurdles, they said, including green media’s potential impact on business.

Julia Li, director of social impact for sustainability at Mediavine, said that while the company is “as efficient as we can be in today’s world,” not working with certain supply-side platforms (SSPs) — which might limit carbon impact — would mean taking “a very significant revenue hit.” Emry Downing Hall, SVP of programmatic revenue and strategy at Unwind Media, said the company has addressed this by “turning off” SSPs that are non-participants in programmatic auctions, which he said has reduced Unwind’s ad requests to SSPs by 50%.

Regarding the volume of auctions, Bridget Williams, chief commercial officer and SVP of digital publishing at Hearst Newspapers, stressed the importance of data: “The more data we have, the smarter choices we can make … We absolutely believe that we should be doing less and making it more valuable. We just need data to support that.”

Chandra Cirulnick, VP of global supply partnerships at Yahoo, said there could be initial unwanted repercussions for advertisers who go green and that the first movers might see a negative impact on their business. But she added that the industry will get to a place where it’s standard.

Standards and regulation were key topics at the summit, with some attendees pointing out that green media adoption might be slow without a guiding framework.

Martin Bryan, global chief sustainability officer at IPG Media Brands, said that regulation would force adoption. John LoPresto, director of brand marketing at Viant, said that the general pitch to potential clients already includes sustainability because “it’s the only way to prioritize” it. Christine Ely, VP of brand integrity and sustainability at Publicis Media, put the path to adoption more bluntly: “Peer pressure.”

Recent examples of proposed guidelines, laws, and initiatives include IAB Tech Lab’s multiyear initiative to reduce the carbon impact of digital ads, launched last year; the E.U. plans to penalize companies that “greenwash,” meaning they mislead consumers about the sustainability of their products; and in the U.S., the FTC is expected to update its “Green Guides” that are also intended to combat greenwashing, according to Adweek.

It wasn’t all about regulation, though. IPG’s Bryan also said that highlighting “profit with a purpose” would lead to action in the ad industry, noting that operating with technology from SeenThis — a sustainability-focused ad tech company — is both efficient and cost saving.

Scope3 — a tech company that helps digital advertisers reduce their carbon emissions — announced at the summit the launch of GMP+, which intends to help advertisers cut out what it calls “problematic placements” that include ads that load outside a viewable area or that reload frequently.

But the bottom line seemed to be this: educating the wider industry is still key.

“We’ve been in education mode for a year, but we can’t stop,” Dentsu’s Bronson said.