The Ad Net Zero
Action Plan

Two to three emissions sources usually predominate within a company in our industry’s day-to-day operations: 

1. Business travel (especially flying) – typically around 60% of an agency’s emissions.
2. Office energy use – can be 40% of emissions. 
3. Data centers and cloud storage – particularly for companies with a lower physical footprint, this is typically one of the largest emissions sources.

Some advertising agencies, along with businesses in other parts of the advertising ecosystem, have already taken significant steps to reduce operational emissions. Those that have driven new behaviours in their companies, and in some cases achieved ISO 14001, B Corp or equivalent recognised standards, report competitive advantage, higher employee morale and financial savings as a result. 

Learning from those who have made the most progress, and to generate a collective drive towards decarbonisation,

Ad Net Zero asks our supporters to: 

• Set a net zero target, including a near term target, and ideally publicly declare these using organisations such as SBTi (Science Based Targets Initiative), The Climate Pledge, SME Climate Hub, or other science-based equivalent initiative. 

• Report, Reduce & Remove – measure and publicly report the carbon emissions of your business on an annual basis to identify and track progress.  

• Work with your clients and suppliers to secure their support for your policies. 

For more information and advice, please download our Action 1 Guide. 

Like other aspects of advertising, motion and stills advertising production can be carbon-intensive processes, particularly location shoots with high levels of travel, hospitality, and complex supply chains. 

More about AdGreen

AdGreen launched in September 2020, helping the advertising industry to eliminate the negative environmental impacts of production, enabling the production community to measure and understand waste and carbon impacts, and empowering them to act for zero waste / zero carbon. Provided free at the point of use to the advertising production community, the project comprises of a carbon calculator, training, resources, and renewable energy and offsetting programmes. AdGreen is predominantly funded via a levy on production spend, which is paid by participating advertisers. 

AdGreen is based in the UK but with global ambition to enable the industry, wherever the activity is, to act for a sustainable future with engagement from companies in over 20 countries. 

AdGreen’s Latest Annual Review 

Data published in AdGreen’s Annual Review reports, highlights the huge opportunity for carbon reduction in the process of ad production around the world. The latest report analysing nearly 2,300 completed projects across hundreds of companies and 20 countries, continues to show that travel and transport activities account for the highest percentage of emissions (over 70%), followed by materials (~10%) and film spaces and accommodation (each around 7%).

The report demonstrates a clear business opportunity for advertisers, creative agencies, and production companies from increasing this data analysis,  working more closely with suppliers, and adopting new, more sustainable approaches to content creation. Significant changes to ad operations are crucial for the industry to meet its net zero target. 

AdGreen’s bespoke carbon calculator tool, created in partnership with industry stakeholders and updated in 2024, enables advertising agency and production teams (‘contributors’) to easily log their production activities and see where practical changes can be made to reduce a project’s carbon footprint. It also allows the related parent companies, production consultancies, brands, and brand parents (‘reviewers’) to explore and analyse footprints for all projects within their campaigns. Later, users will be able to generate reporting data, which can be used to inform larger company-wide reporting. 

Find out more about AdGreen’s resources here.

The weight and media mix chosen for a campaign can make a substantial difference to its carbon footprint. Advertisers and their media investment advisors need to be well informed so they can plan their schedules with their environmental impact in mind. 

Consistency in media emissions measurement

In March 2023, Ad Net Zero launched a fast track workstream to identify a standard framework for measuring the carbon emissions from media campaigns. It aimed to bring together the best thinking from across the industry into one common framework by benchmarking the current carbon measurement and estimation practices to identify common definitions and measures. By establishing consistent data inputs across all media channels, this will help to facilitate accurate reporting of the emissions stemming from media. 

The first version of the Ad Net Zero Global Media Sustainability Framework was released in summer 2024, with frameworks across six media channels (Digital, TV/Video, OOH, Audio, Print, Cinema). The summer 2025 release v1.2 will include formulae for nearly all channels, and detailed Data Guidance for the Digital channel, with this guidance to follow for the remaining channels in late 2025.

Why is the GMSF important for the future of advertising:

• It’s built on climate-science standards and advertising industry best practices to allow for the measurement of media emissions more accurately across channels, geographies, and providers, increasingly important due to regulation.
• The GMSF aims to increase transparency, consistency, and accuracy, with a useful, usable, evolving framework developed pre-competitively by the industry in support of advertisers and other key stakeholders.
• The GMSF provides measurement frameworks for the lifecycle of an advertisement, that fosters an activity-based approach, rather than only a spend-based estimate that is often used to quantify these emissions.

For questions or further details on the GMSF, please contact: hello@adnetzero.com.

Reducing media emissions and driving stronger performance

While the GMSF continues development as the foundational measurement criteria, it is important to provide the industry with interim actionable advice. To do this, in 2023, Ad Net Zero published an ‘Action Guide to Reduce Media Greenhouse Gas Emissions’, which is advice to help reduce the environmental impact of media plans with 10 actions across various channels.

This also complements the work completed by IAB Tech Lab in its Programmatic Sustainability Playbook, more granularly applicable for SSPs and DSPs in particular, which can be viewed here.

Awards  

The advertising industry is social and thrives on coming together, for example, around industry awards nights, along with industry conferences.

These perform a valued role in a healthy community of like-minded professionals, promoting excellence and stimulating competition, for creativity and effectiveness. There are some awards for ‘green’ campaigns although these are limited. In most instances, awards for environmentally positive advertising are rolled into a broader ‘social good’ or ‘social purpose’ category, separated as niche and lower down in the hierarchy of importance. 

And when it comes to the coveted ‘Grand Prix’ awards especially, juries are seldom invited to consider the carbon impact of the advertising they are evaluating. We challenge the awarding bodies to introduce that thinking into their judging criteria.  

Cannes Lions

In 2023, Cannes Lions included a sustainability question on the entry form for all entries, and in 2024, the answers become visible for jurors to see. This data is used by LIONS to provide a benchmark report year-on-year for how the industry is making progress on embedding sustainability into its work. View the current sustainability question here.

Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards

To help identify best practice and examples of sustainable campaigns, the Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards, launched in 2022, recognise the businesses, organisations, and individuals who are leading the way in reducing their carbon footprint and contributing to the global effort to combat the climate emergency through advertising’s messages. 

Judging work on the dual criteria of creative excellence and sustainability, these awards aim to inspire others to transform their own work by showcasing the innovative and effective measures being taken to reduce emissions within adland. You can view all the winners from 2023 and 2024 in the annual ‘Book of the Night’ case study compilations.

Events   

For many organisations, events are important marketing channels for customer acquisition and retention.  But events can generate substantial carbon emissions, often unnecessarily or wastefully, and could be conducted in more climate-friendly ways. In order to meet the ambitions of Ad Net Zero, it is important that we take into account the climate impact of industry events. 

For Ad Net Zero’s own events as well as a key resource for supporters, we have partnered with isla – an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting the events industry’s transition to a sustainable future – using their TRACE tool to measure emissions from events. All Ad Net Zero members are entitled to discounted membership of isla. You can schedule an appointment to learn more here.

Also in partnership with isla, our Action 4 working group created a Sustainable Events Starter Guide tailored for the ad industry to help organisations overcome obstacles and identify ways to add value to their event and be kinder to the planet.

The pandemic proved to us that there are better ways to run meetings and events, being thoughtful to minimize travel and drive high engagement. When travel is unavoidable, utilising facilities and contractors that exercise sustainability standards makes a big difference. And more times than not, making more sustainable choices is an opportunity to elevate the event experience and drive stronger brand loyalty.

Ad Net Zero believes that brands can use advertising to promote more sustainable choices, to back innovations that deliver greener solutions to people’s needs and desires, and to highlight behaviours that could reduce carbon emissions. 

Various studies demonstrate increasing demand from consumers for more sustainable products and offerings:

• Kantar BrandZ 2024 data found that 93% of consumers globally say they want to live a more sustainable lifestyle, demonstrating the business opportunity and risk of pursuing more sustainable strategies.
• McKinsey’s 2023 study found that over the past five years, products making ESG-related claims accounted for 56% of all growth—about 18 percent more than would have been expected given their standing at the beginning of the five-year period: products making these claims averaged 28% cumulative growth over the five-year period, versus 20% for products that made no such claims.
• Research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Kantar suggests 64% of consumers say it is businesses’ responsibility to solve climate and environmental issues, 68% of employees say organisations should step up when governments fail to fix society’s problems and nearly half (49%) of investors would sell their investment if a company does not sufficiently address Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.  

Supporting more sustainable behaviours in advertising

The Kantar Sustainable Behaviours Tracker

Ad Net Zero has partnered with Kantar to launch the Sustainable Behaviours Advertising Tracker. The Tracker, a project between the Advertising Association, Ad Net Zero and Kantar, aims to deliver a new regular report, based on work underway by Ad Net Zero under Action 5. 

The new report will provide a quarterly and annual review of the prevalence of sustainable behaviours within advertising campaigns. It will provide a new level of insights to the advertising industry, with benchmarks across categories for the portrayal of more sustainable behaviours. 

Purpose Disruptors’ #ChangeTheBrief

#ChangeTheBrief is an initiative that began organically at Mindshare and is now championed by Purpose Disruptors. Acknowledging that agencies – strategic, creative and media alike – have a duty to serve their clients to the best of their abilities, #ChangetheBrief suggests that, when briefed by a client, agencies consider how to encourage a sustainable behaviour or attitude in the client’s audience.  #ChangeTheBrief is a robust 6-week training program, designed for group setting, as well as a platform for deeper dive resources.

Every Brief Counts

Ad Net Zero has also created a resource for supporters called ‘Every Brief Counts’ as a practical toolkit and ideation resource. Reach out to hello@adnetzero.com for more information as this is still in pilot stage.

Avoiding Misleading Environmental Claims and Greenwashing 

As brands increasingly promote more sustainable products and services, it’s important our industry understands the regulations surrounding this. Each country has different rules on making accurate environmental claims. Ad Net Zero has local resources and training to help supporters be aware of what is relevant in their market.

A valuable place to start is the Global Guidance on Environmental Claims published by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the global marketing trade body, in April 2022. 

In terms of the regulation of advertising in the UK:

• CAP codes and ASA regulation already cover the need for clarity, substantiation and evidence for environmental claims. Guidance on environmental claims can be found via the ASA website, and the regulator is also reviewing how consumers understand the terminology ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral’ – helping consumers understand substantiation of claims.
• The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published a Green Claims Code, outlining, for example, how relevant claims must be truthful, clear and evidence-backed – while avoiding important omissions; making fair and meaningful comparisons; and considering the full lifecycle of a product. The CMA also offers a useful checklist and a more detailed guide, in a consumer context. 

In the US, applicable regulations include:

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “Green Guides” – first issued in 1992 and were revised in 1996, 1998, and 2012. The guidance they provide includes: 1) general principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims; 2) how consumers are likely to interpret particular claims and how marketers can substantiate these claims; and 3) how marketers can qualify their claims to avoid deceiving consumers.
• California Assembly Bill No. 1305 Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosures – requires entities doing business in California to disclose specified information regarding the marketing, sale, purchase, or use of certain voluntary carbon offsets.

Celebrating our industry’s best work 

The Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards were launched in 2022 and while the awards show and programme itself models the best practices we’d like to see across all other awards shows (See Action 4), the winners coming out of it provide the industry with a solid bank of case studies every year for immediate inspiration for their own creative work and/or sustainable business strategies. 

Judging work on the dual criteria of creative excellence and sustainability. You can view all the winners from 2023 and 2024 in the annual ‘Book of the Night’ case study compilations.