New Study Analyzes The Real Carbon Cost Of Products And Its Impact On Advertising Campaigns

Global warming has been an alarming issue that’s now more prevalent than before. And that’s why there are more and more researchers being conducted on the subject to help raise awareness of how businesses might be to blame.

Remember, the climate issue has a lot to do with human activity and that indirectly means firms need to step up to the plate and lower carbon footprints before it gets too late.

Meanwhile, there are a number of obstacles in today’s advertising industry with the surge in customers shopping online.

According to the latest study by MarTech, the global consultancy company Fifty-Five has gone one step ahead of the rest and started to analyze what is the true carbon price for products and services, including the impact it can have on the world of digital advertising.

The agency has shown how the average estimate for total emissions in regards to advertising programs being launched is nearly 323 tons. To put it simply, it’s an estimate of the carbon footprint that’s related to 16 American citizens. But how exactly did the firm land on this particular figure? There must be some way.


The company is going public with how they’ve used various practices while detailing the methodologies used to decide this conclusion. In the same way, they even went one step ahead of the rest in outlining the various practices used for limiting the impact.

And that includes giving people access to different enhancements through which we can improve the environment through the world of digital marketing.

This particular study enlightened readers on how leading digital channels in today’s world like Facebook. Instagram, Google, and YouTube might be playing a bigger role in the problem than originally anticipated.

Other formats that the research claims to be worth a glance include Video Feed, Text Ads, Carousel Feed, Ads for Shopping, and True View amongst others.

Now the ultimate target here was to expand upon this research’s findings to various kinds of advertising platforms like radio, television, print, and more. Similarly, this particular study is related to different types of broadcasting, audience calculation, production, and more.

To be more specific, this information has gone on to show how today’s world of advertising is to blame for the great amount of greenhouse gas being released and how its alarming rates of growth per year. And it even goes as far as suggesting how it is actually much greater in amount than your usual cargo flights and the commercial airlines we see today.

As Fifty-Five reveals, the amount produced by a single digital campaign has to do with nearly 70 tons of CO2 and that’s equivalent to the carbon footprints of more than 7 people.

Next, we saw the study going ahead and outlining what protocols could be used to counteract these high emissions by more than half.

Common recommendations being provided included filming with a reasoning, optimized content for videos, and also campaigns being delivered through wi-fi as compared to the usual cellphone networks.

As far as video and channels were concerned, the study highlights four kinds of emission sources.

This is where great stress was laid on agencies and their role in this regard. On average, emissions had to do with working days that would be used to create a media strategy for the particular campaign. Then, efforts towards regulating it, setting it, and ensuring the final result worked brilliantly meant 21kg of carbon dioxide emissions were released.

As far as display campaigns are considered, the amount calculated was about 50kg of carbon dioxide. And for sponsor links, the study took into consideration emissions related to media agencies and any search engine’s platform for devising results.

Other than that, we saw this particular study introduce ideas relating to emissions given per impression and that is very commonly used to evaluate performances for various campaigns.

Clearly, the main aim here was to provide a wake-up call about how firms are indirectly causing global warming and how they need to stop soon. And with this much data being outlined, it's time we all got serious and urged advertisers to act smartly before it's too late.
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