This year’s fourth annual Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards showed, more clearly than ever, that creative, scalable sustainability solutions are moving from niche to mainstream within advertising.
A special thank you goes to Google for their fourth year of headline sponsorship, and to our supporting partners IPA, ISBA, AdGreen, and AOP, whose contributions ensured the continuation of the awards, and the ability for them to be hosted in such a venue as The Londoner, with vegan catering for all guests.
With a +29% YoY rise in entries, and 32 categories, with 90 shortlisted entries, the awards exemplified the breadth of work out there right now, and the commitment of agencies, brands, media owners, and technology partners working towards a low-carbon future, with household names like ITV and Mastercard securing wins on the day.
Laura Tobin, our host for the evening and ITV’s Weather Presenter, opened the event by reflecting on the urgency of the climate challenge. Summer 2025 was the warmest summer on record for the UK, and the government is now preparing emergency plans for a drought in 2026.
She connected this stark warning to why the Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards are so important. In a world facing escalating climate risks, advertising has a critical role – not just in reducing emissions but in encouraging sustainable behaviours. By learning from these campaigns, we can scale these proven approaches and ensure the industry moves towards a sustainable future.
This message of learning is one echoed by Gideon Spanier, the UK editor-in-chief of Campaign, who noted “Our aim since the start has been for the Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards to be a benchmark of excellence. What is exciting is that now, in the fourth year of these awards, we have a growing bank of real-world case studies that are a source of learning and inspiration.”
You can find these case studies and more via Campaign’s writeup here. To see work from previous years, see Ad Net Zero’s case studies which are available to supporters here, and Campaigns’ ‘Book of the Night’ –
Spotlight on our Grand Prix Winners
dentsu Denmark took home the International Grand Prix for their work with Visit Aarhus on the ‘So much to enjoy, So close to you’ campaign.
Similar to last year’s Grand Prix winning work, the judges said they chose this campaign as the winner due to its ability for replication and scale.
“Any travel and tourism brand looking to build more responsible visitor growth” can do so “by targeting audiences where it can offer fast, attractive and more sustainable transport links to travellers”.
They also noted the timeliness of the work, stating “It arrives just as the world’s travel and tourism sector faces major challenges in shifting long-established behaviours and habits.”
“Global tourism emissions grew 3.5% p.a. between 2009-2019, double that of the worldwide economy, reaching 5.2 Gt CO2-e or 8.8% of total global GHG emissions in 2019” (Nature, 2024). While the latest WTTC data shows progress with the Travel and Tourism’s share of the global emissions has fallen to 7.3%, the challenge remains significant: 49% of emissions still come from transport and 57.4% from the supply chain.
This is precisely why replicatable, low-carbon travel campaigns like dentsu Denmark’s matter. They demonstrate how communications can directly shift a high-emissions category and align consumer sentiment with real life action.
For the UK Grand Prix, MG OMD & ITV won for ‘Warming the UK up to low carbon heating systems with a trusted British soap’, in partnership with the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
The judges highlighted how the use of “entertainment to drive behaviour change can be hugely effective” (similar to ITV’s collaboration with Love Island and eBay, which won at the 2023 awards) and, similar to the other Grand Prix in its adoptability, noted they “would like to see media owners of all kinds in all markets adopt and build upon” the winning work.
The work “creatively leveraged the Emmerdale audience to drive awareness of heat pumps to a previously untapped audience at scale” and “through a combination of advertising and content, has helped to show how this new technology can be a more normal part of everyday life for millions.”
This normalisation and scalability is what the Climate Change Committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget declared necessary to hit net zero targets.
“Once the market has locked into a decarbonisation solution, it needs to be delivered. The roll-out rates required for the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, and renewables are similar to those previously achieved for mass-market rollouts of mobile phones, refrigerators, and internet connections.
The private sector has a proven record of innovating and delivering rapid transitions in technologies and consumer choices, provided the right incentives are in place.”
These transitions, and the way they are communicated and incentivised, are where the advertising industry has, and can again, play a uniquely influential role. We are the industry that shapes desires, drives consumption, and influences cultural habits.
Sean Pitman, Senior Policy Advisor at DESNZ wrote how the UK Government’s Communications Directorate Campaigns team “got busy behind the scenes, working with Emmerdale and ITV to bring this story to life” with the aim of promoting “the Boiler Upgrade Scheme by connecting Emmerdale with a practical step watched by four million TV viewers, who might be unfamiliar with heat pump technology”. (Heating Up Success: How we’re building a Cleaner, Greener Britain, 2025).
This interaction and collaboration between government, private sector and members of the public, is the triangulation we need to push the ‘mass-market rollouts’ for carbon reducing technologies and behaviours that will push us towards net zero together.
Looking ahead to 2026
The Ad Net Zero team is already looking forward to next year’s awards, where we’ll celebrate the progress made and the new innovations driving sustainable advertising.
If you want to be part of this movement and showcase your work in 2026, register your interest now and join us in shaping a low-carbon future for our industry.
