GARM and Ad Net Zero launch guide to sustainable media at Cannes

New guide identifies 10 areas across planning, buying and activation where advertisers can consider immediate action to reduce carbon emissions

The WFA’s GARM and Ad Net Zero have launched the world’s first guide to sustainable media for advertisers at the Cannes Lions Festival. The guide identifies the areas where advertisers can consider action now to reduce the direct carbon emissions of their advertising activity.

GARM Sustainability: Action Guide to Reduce Media Greenhouse Gas Emissions will be formally published as part of Beet.TV’s Sustainability Summit on Thursday 22 June at Cannes Lions, which takes place in partnership with Ad Net Zero and the 4A’s.

The goal is to ensure that advertisers and the agencies and tech partners they work with can play their part in helping the world meet the Paris Climate Goals and limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.

The guide consolidates current best practice on media sustainability and has been collated by the GARM Sustainability Steer Team, which brings together brands and industry bodies such as Diageo, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Mars, L’Oréal, Reckitt, Mastercard, 4A’s, Ad Net Zero, ANA, ISBA, WFA and the Responsible Marketing Agency. Agency holding companies, publishers, data and technology providers have also played a key part in creating the guide.

Key areas where advertisers can take action are split into four different areas, ranging from supplier selection to optimizing creative and media planning and buying.

Among the detailed suggests are ways to reduce duplication in programmatic actions and infrastructure, create a supplier ‘greenlist’, maximising value from existing creative and compressing digital ad formats to reduce the energy needed to play them.

To ensure the efforts are aligned with current science, GARM has also created a Climate Science Expert Group, featuring Brain Oxygen, BSI Group, and brand-side chief sustainability officers from Mastercard, Reckitt and Unilever, who have reviewed all the suggestions to ensure they will make a genuine difference.

“Media leaders hold the power to make an impact for the climate and there is plenty they can do now, working with their colleagues in procurement and sustainability to ensure the media function can deliver real impact on direct emissions. We have much work to do to deliver real transformation across marketing including looking at common definitions, common metrics, shared tools, and independent verification but this guide is a meaningful starting point and highlights current best practice,” said Rob Rakowitz, GARM Initiative Lead.

Sebastian Munden, Chair, Ad Net Zero, said: “Anyone involved in the media planning and buying of advertising campaigns can take immediate steps to decarbonise their impact. This guide sets out very clearly what you can do and where to remove carbon emissions from your day-to-day media plans. As a result, you can reduce the negative impact while retaining the full effectiveness of your ad spend. Climate change is a real and present issue in all our lives – there is no excuse for inaction and we urge you to ensure industry colleagues do the same.”

The new publication sits alongside the WFA’s recent Sustainable Marketing 2030 Report, which highlights a new circular approach to marketing and identifies key levers that marketers can use to make an impact both on internal initiatives and changing consumer behaviour.

It also complements the work completed by IAB Tech Lab in its Sustainability Playbook published earlier this month. This drive to decarbonise the media supply chain for advertisers is part of wider efforts by Ad Net Zero, with the support of the WFA, to rapidly decarbonise the advertising industry and promote more sustainable products, services and behaviours.

Ad Net Zero has now introduced mandatory setting and reporting of science-based targets of all supporters (within 12 months of joining) to help accelerate the change needed across the industry. WFA, GARM and Ad Net Zero have also joined forces on an acceleration agenda to identify a standard framework for measuring media campaign carbon emissions, with target of taking it to wider industry consultation before end 2023.

Download the guide in full here.