A guide to a more environmentally friendly strategy!
Online advertising is everywhere in our daily lives, but it comes with a real environmental cost. Digital ads have a high carbon footprint because of the amount of energy needed to store, transfer, and display them. A recent study by Ebiquity and Scope 3 finds that digital marketing could account for as much as 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So how can we reduce the environmental footprint of online advertising?
Read on for the analysis and possible solutions explored by Laurence Desjardins, media specialist at Hamak!
Communicate less, but communicate better
Whether the goal is better campaign performance or a response to environmental concerns, one truth applies either way: what matters most isn’t how many marketing messages you send, but how good they are.
Instead of bombarding prospects with constant messages, focus on creating fewer, more meaningful messages that speak to the needs and interests of your target audience. This helps you connect more genuinely with your audience and build stronger relationships with them.
To get there, messages need to be carefully crafted so they offer real value to users. Honest arguments and transparency should guide the writing of promotional messages. When it fits, it can also be worthwhile to touch on social or environmental topics to educate, raise awareness, or simply inform consumers about the cause at hand. This kind of content tends to perform well, since it gives users something of genuine value.
That’s exactly the challenge we took on with paid search for La Transformerie, a non-profit. The organization fights food waste through its Rescapés project, making spreads from unsold food collected from grocery stores across the province.
Even though paid search was used to sell the spreads, the ad messaging looked nothing like typical sales pitches. To offer something meaningful and personal, it highlighted the problem of food waste, the quality of the unsold food, and the work of the volunteers behind the project.
As a result, the ad gave something real to the user. It was useful, relevant, and consistent content for the consumer, who was far more likely to trust a brand whose messaging earned it that kind of goodwill.
Cut down on wasted impressions
One obvious way to lower the carbon footprint of online advertising is to reduce the number of wasted ad impressions. In other words, limit how many ads are shown to people who have no interest in them or who aren’t likely customers.
Online advertising is often rolled out to a broad audience without regard for each user’s individual interests or needs. This can lead to an overload of unwanted ads, which lowers campaign performance and adds to digital pollution.
To cut down on wasted impressions, it’s worth using artificial intelligence to target consumers based on their interests and habits, so you can predict their behavior and show ads that actually make sense for your audience.
Targeting built around data privacy
The end of third-party cookie targeting is coming fast. We need to prepare for this shift on several fronts, starting with how we collect data. You can learn more about this in our blog post on the phase-out of third-party cookies.
To reduce wasted impressions, targeting should rely on first-party data collection. For example, pairing first-party data with Google’s smart bidding can deliver good results. Smart bidding automates bids in Google Ads to help meet a specific conversion goal.
Ultimately, by reaching the right audience more precisely, companies can both improve their advertising performance and help cut down on digital pollution and the carbon emissions tied to internet use.
Use greener ad formats
Choosing greener ad formats can help decarbonize the online advertising industry. Static ads, for instance, need less energy to load than animated ones. So using more static ads can help reduce the carbon emissions generated by digital marketing.
That said, some animated formats use less energy than others. HTML5 is one example: it uses less bandwidth than other popular animation formats like GIFs. HTML5 ads can also be optimized to load faster, which lowers energy use and makes them a greener choice when animation is needed.
Shrink the size of ads
Another way to reduce the environmental footprint of digital marketing is to shrink ad file sizes. Online ads can use a lot of bandwidth, especially when they include high-resolution images or video. The bigger the file, the more energy it takes to load.
To address this, it’s worth optimizing images and videos to smaller sizes and using compression to keep ads lightweight without sacrificing quality.
Use more energy-efficient technology
Digital marketing can also be improved by using greener technology to deliver ads. The servers hosting ads can consume a lot of energy, especially when they’re located in regions where power comes from fossil fuels.
To help fix this, it’s worth turning to more energy-efficient technology, like servers powered by renewable energy or hosted in energy-efficient data centers.
Amazon Web Services is a good example. AWS has launched several initiatives to lower its environmental impact, including the use of renewable energy and better use of hardware resources, drawing on solar, wind, or hydroelectric power to run its data centers and servers. On top of that, caching technology that stores ads locally on a user’s device cuts down on the energy needed to transfer them.
Measure and track your sustainability impact
To measure the environmental impact of marketing efforts, it helps to put a sustainability plan in place. Knowing where to start when it comes to cutting emissions can be hard, so building a clear plan with concrete, achievable goals will make the whole project easier to manage.
The first step is tracking the greenhouse gas emissions generated by different activities within the company. Scope 3 is one solution on the market that lets companies see how their emissions break down.
From there, companies can commit to limiting carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions by joining programs like Ad Net Zero or Science-Based Targets. These give companies a clear path toward lowering emissions.
Putting part of the ad budget toward emissions reduction can also build more trust in your brand. Sustainability is increasingly shaping how consumers make decisions. By showing a real commitment to sustainability, companies can strengthen their brand reputation and attract customers and investors who care about the environment.
A final word
In short, digital marketing has a real impact on the environment because of its high carbon footprint. But by taking the right steps, cutting wasted impressions, using greener ad formats and more energy-efficient technology, communicating better, and tracking environmental impact, we can genuinely reduce that footprint.
This calls for companies and marketers to rethink their digital marketing strategies from the ground up. Environmental concerns should be part of how ad campaigns are planned, using tools like AI-based targeting, first-party data collection, and greener ad formats.
At the end of the day, a more environmentally conscious digital marketing strategy can help companies advertise more effectively, strengthen their brand image, and do their part to protect the environment. By acting now, we can all help build a more sustainable future for online advertising!
Our team would be glad to help guide you toward a digital marketing strategy that takes these concerns into account, so you can lower your environmental impact while growing your brand. Feel free to reach out and tell us about your project. We’d love to offer some personalized advice!
