Let’s make every ad a green ad

By Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive, Advertising Association

The advertising industry provides organisations worldwide with ideas that drive behaviour change and support innovation, competition and growth. This needs to go hand in hand with rapid decarbonisation to meet the challenges of the climate crisis.

The announcement to scale Ad Net Zero internationally at Cannes Lions 2022 is a catalytic moment – leaders from ten of the world’s largest companies in advertising and ten leading national and international trade bodies are joining forces to expand Ad Net Zero beyond the UK into key advertising markets.

These leaders include figures from the world’s major advertising agency holding companies, dentsu international, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe and WPP, along with Unilever – one of the world’s largest advertisers, plus Google and Meta, European media company Sky, supported by US trade bodies ANA, 4A’s and IAB, European and global agency associations, EACA and Voxcomm, the WFA representing global advertisers and the IAA, plus LIONS. These organisations are calling for others to join and help drive changes in the way the advertising is made and distributed, set metrics for progress and enable everybody to take positive steps.

To recap, Ad Net Zero is the five-point action plan to reduce carbon emissions from UK advertising operations to net zero by 2030 and pledges to use advertising’s power to accelerate the switch to more sustainable products and services for consumers. It runs in partnership with advertisers as they decarbonise their own operations.

If Ad Net Zero can reach the world’s top 20 advertising markets in the next few years, over 90% of global adspend will be on a path to lower operational emissions. Extending Ad Net Zero to the USA, plus one additional major European market, along with the UK, will mean around 50% will be covered. The US alone is critical, accounting for about 40% of the world’s adspend.

All industries are accelerating their own paths to becoming more sustainable and we will see advertising increasingly deployed in support – we are now tracking this in the UK.

Let’s take the new car market as an example and the growth in advertising of hybrid and electric alternatives to conventional petrol and diesel cars. Analysis by our think tank, Credos, shows an increase from 8% share in 2018 to 72% by the end of 2021. This has been stimulated by the UK Government’s 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol/diesel cars, but the speed of this advertising investment, is well ahead of roughly one in eight sales currently for hybrids and EVs. It is a striking example of advertising building market demand for more sustainable products, paving the way to a massive shift in consumer behaviour and a dramatic reduction to one of the economy’s highest-emitting sectors.

No doubt similar changes are happening in other markets, and we plan to track these too. We anticipate all kinds of shifts, large and small, as advertising supports the complete reinventions of products and services alongside nudges towards more sustainable behaviours, such as supermarkets promoting meat-free meals.

To make our industry sustainable, Ad Net Zero is advocating carbon calculators and reporting tools across ad operations, from production, media distribution and through how we promote excellence through events and awards. All of this is essential and should ultimately be the work of everyone working in advertising, wherever they are in the world.

The Ad Net Zero global partners are now working on an international roadmap and are committed to holding regular forums to report on progress and share developments. Our next stop after Cannes will be Advertising Week New York in October, then a month later at the Ad Net Zero Global Summit on 9-10 November – a key moment as the world gathers for COP27. We will hold a Global Summit every year, always online and always free-to-attend, as we scale our industry’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

We’ve launched AdNetZero.com, where people can register their personal commitment and stay involved with the programme as it expands. We all want more organisations to come aboard, so if you want to get involved, please contact us at adnetzero.com and help make every ad a green ad in the years ahead.