Carbon Calculator Update: A note from Chris Cashen (Mindshare) Ad Net Zero Council
Thanks to our team’s significant role, Action 3 has made tremendous strides in advancing emissions reduction from media planning and buying.
We have several Irish-specific case studies that the team is developing to demonstrate easy-to-adopt practices that can make marked impact in reducing GHG emissions. These will be available over the next few months and into 2025.
But we have never hidden that the systematic transformation will come from adopting carbon calculators, with established benchmarks and periodic reporting. To minimise the impact of our campaigns, we must first have the capability to track and measure them.
While these often feel like global initiatives, Ad Net Zero are committed to inform Irish members of where each major media group stands on its efforts locally. Each group who are producing calculators are represented in Action Group 3, giving equal representation and voice to the local picture.
Global Background: Core are currently working with clients to implement our carbon calculator A.L.I.C.E (Advertising Limiting Impacts & Carbon Emissions). Our joint aim is to reduce the carbon footprint of communication campaigns and projects. A.L.I.C.E was designed by the CSR Department of Publicis Groupe, with Bureau Veritas to determine a solid calculation basis integrating greenhouse gas emission factors from several international databases all backed by the GHG Protocol. Being aware that everything we do and realize for our customers has many environmental impacts, A.L.I.C.E forces us to revisit our ways of doing and thinking, and to find alternatives. A.L.I.C.E gives a photograph based on the data entered in real time, making it possible to identify action levers that will enable us to reduce and offset carbon emissions.
Local Adaptations: A.L.I.C.E was developed with the teams from the various business lines and from different countries, including Ireland and with the support of external third parties, to determine the essential elements to be considered in the calculations.
Projects Completed: Core are currently testing out their methodology and calculator
Upcoming versions and amendments: Core are constantly working with local suppliers to incorporate more localised data to refine carbon calculations and finding ways to integrate the calculator with our already existing suite of tools to optimise planning outputs for our clients.
Global Background: Dentsu is one of the first companies in the world to have our decarbonization target of 90% reduction for by signed off by the Science Based Target Initiates (SBTi). For the remaining 10%,Dentsu plans to neutralize those emissions through credible and verifiable greenhouse gas removal projects. Dentsu wants to achieve ”deep” decarbonization. We aim for 90-95% reduction across all emission scopes before 2050.
Local Adaptations: Dentsu are yet to roll out a Media Carbon Calculator in Ireland. However, we have approached the Global sustainability team about getting access so we can test using it in the very near future with a client. We have onboarded ‘SeenThis’ the streaming technology company to optimize our creative delivery and reduce data usage. We are also working on an exciting project to use a custom script to help cut down on the data use in the ad selection process for Programmatic buying.
Projects Completed: Dentsu are currently testing out their methodology and calculator with roll out expected in late 2024.
Upcoming versions and amendments: Media Carbon Calculator is under review, with particular emphasis on adhering to a measurement framework
Global Background: As the first in the industry to account for media emissions in their science-based reduction and net-zero targets, GroupM and WPP are working to support the industry and their clients to reduce emissions in this highly complex space. We provide access to our framework free of charge and have openly shared it with industry working groups engaging in the development of standards such as Ad Net Zero and previously GARM.
Local Adaptations: Built for multi-market use, local data adds more nuance to allow for more accurate calculations.
Projects completed: Clients who have signed up for GroupM’s Client Coalition have started seeing the carbon calculator at work to benchmark and offset on an opt-in basis for 2024. Multi-market clients such as Tesco have already undertaken significant projects and actions, resulting in greener media plans and have already been awarded at the Ad Net Zero awards.
Upcoming versions and amendments: Working closely with GARM on the new measurement framework, these recommendations are currently being implemented. As new thinking and new technology comes to market, we will continually evolve and amend the calculator as needed. For example, our current global partnership with SeenThis allows us to manage and minimise carbon emissions while improving performance of display campaigns, and we are currently aligning methodologies on the carbon cost of data transfer.
Global Background: Havas has established global targets to reduce our carbon footprint, focusing on both our operations and energy consumption. In 2023, we introduced the “Carbon Impact Calculator,” with an Irish-specific adaptation launching in 2024. This tool empowers our teams to better understand the environmental impact of our actions across different channel mixes, adding an important layer of consideration alongside audience insights and effectiveness metrics. Beyond media emissions, the calculator also estimates the carbon footprint associated with creative production.
Local Adaptations: The carbon calculator is available for opt in-across all clients. To date, we have applied the calculator to test cases but expect an increase in client uptake over the next twelve months.
Projects Completed: The Carbon Calculator is now fully operational for all clients in Ireland. Emissions tracking has been successfully applied and tested with select clients and has been incorporated into our tendering and pitching processes. The UK team is also working to implement the calculator across all clients.
Upcoming versions and amendments: Havas contributed to the GARM and Ad Net Zero global framework for measuring media’s carbon emissions, with plans to formally integrate these recommendations into our calculator. Additionally, Havas is continuously refining the calculator based on feedback from our international teams.
Global Background: Omnicom Media Group’s carbon tool uses the method developed and certified by Climate Partner to calculate the emissions of a programmatic campaign. With the emissions calculated in this way, they can then optimise the campaigns in the next step and optimise the emissions per impression while maintaining the same media efficiency.
Local Adaptations: Built on Climate Partner, the ‘OMG Carbon Scenario Planner’ tool is being used routinely for planning media for Skoda Ireland and is undergoing further development; the tool enables media and emissions optimisation side-by-side in real time to make media choices that reduce emissions while maintaining/improving performance. GHG emission audits have been carried out on an increasing number of selected clients to assess media’s ‘eco-efficiency’ and to inform optimisations across the channel mix (online and offline) using Climate Partner and local data.
Projects Completed: With OMG Marketplace partners Converge and Scope3, we have begun an initiative to measure and optimise against emissions on digital activity. As standard, we measure carbon emissions in three layers: Base (underlying programmatic emissions), Supply Path, (individual publisher and their specific exchange setup), and Creative, for (individual advertisers’ creative assets). This enables insight into areas for improvement and carbon reduction across a digital campaign while live. On selected clients, we have optimised campaigns using this approach over the past 9 months.
Upcoming versions and amendments: A successful test of Impact+ was completed on a select client with plans to scale its use across the client’s portfolio.
Note: This update and information was provided from group representation sitting within each media entity
August 20th 2024
