Is Your Ad Campaign Hurting the Planet?
Digital marketing, often perceived as environmentally friendly, has a hidden carbon footprint. This article explores the surprising environmental impact of digital advertising, from data centers to excessive ad campaigns. It highlights the need for sustainable digital design and showcases companies like Sanofi leading the way in eco-conscious marketing. Discover how to balance effective campaigns with planetary responsibility.
The Need for Sustainable Digital Design
The balance of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans and the global effort to reduce this has become one of the most crucial for larger organizations. As a result, all industries are constantly examining and developing their processes to achieve the least possible environmental impact.
So far, packaging and manufacturing have received the most attention, but step by step, numerous other business areas are also initiating the reduction of environmental impacts. As a great example, thoughtful and carefully planned advertising is becoming increasingly important within the digital world.
Consumer Demand for Sustainable Practices
Especially in Western Europe and America, consumers are increasingly demanding and taking into account in their purchasing decisions whether brands are acting responsible during their productions.
Well-thought marketing concepts and design are also cornerstones of a brand's commitment to environmental responsibility. Green thinking and its emphasis greatly contribute to the development of consumer trust and brand loyalty.
The Environmental Impact of Digital Activities
From an environmental point of view, the digital world has not received enough attention so far, because the majority of society believes that these activities are not harmful to the environment. They are paperless business processes and many people think that they therefore have no impact on the world around us.
This is a huge misunderstanding!
It is true that some studies have shown that digital advertising contributes 32% to the average consumer's digital footprint and can be 93% more environmentally friendly than traditional media, but it still has an environmental impact.
Data Centers and Their Environmental Impact
Data centers, the engines of our digital experiences, consume a huge amount of energy for cooling and operation, significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. But the impact does not stop there.
There is no precise data on the OpenAI product ChatGPT, but it is important to know that the operation of large language models requires a huge amount of computing power.
The servers required to run the models require a lot of energy. According to reports, OpenAI may rely on thousands of A100 servers, each of which consumes around 3000 watts.
Thus, each search we do with artificial intelligence uses about ten times more energy than a traditional Google search using keywords.
Digital Advertising and Its Environmental Impact
When it comes to keywords, it is also important to mention digital advertising as one of the most energy-intensive digital processes. Every time we see a digital ad on our devices, be it a computer, phone or tablet, they all consume a significant amount of electricity.
High-resolution video-based advertising and streaming services further increase this negative impact, as they require significant bandwidth and processing power from data centers and user devices.
Uploading a video ad is like putting up a digital poster. There is a server on the advertiser's side where the video is uploaded. As soon as the system detects a user from the right target audience, it detects this within fractions of a second and immediately plays the video uploaded to the server, and tracks who saw this particular ad using analytics.
This process uses a significant amount of energy in the huge data centers that operate the advertiser's server.
So, if the target groups are not sufficiently defined in marketing campaigns and the ads are also delivered to those who would not be interested in them at all, then this can lead to wasteful impressions, which further increases the environmental footprint.
The Creative Production Process and Its Environmental Impact
Even the creative production process itself - video editing, device storage, and in some cases even physical props - contributes to the environmental impact of digital marketing campaigns. Although digital activities have a much smaller digital footprint than personal meetings or print media, they still have an impact on our environment.
Temu: A Case Study of Excessive Marketing
Among the high-volume marketing campaigns, Temu from China has stood out in recent times. Temu's marketing budget increased significantly in 2023, by some estimates by 1000%, reaching somewhere around $480 million.
At the beginning of the year, the New York Times published an article that in 2023 the Chinese played around 1.4 million ads on Google's platforms, and according to Meta's advertising reports, at least 26,000 different graphic ads appeared on Facebook and Instagram pages.
This huge media turmoil has a huge negative environmental impact, similar of the flooding of rice fields, because regardless of the quality of the products sold, the digital ads played to a huge audience already have a drastic impact.
Sanofi: A Company Taking Sustainability Seriously
Fortunately, some companies are not only putting the green movement on their flag, but are also making it an integral part of their well-thought, long-term strategy, already taking into account the environmental efficiency of their marketing campaigns in the planning phase.
Sanofi's Vision for a Sustainable Future
I recently had the opportunity to engage in a fascinating conversation with Prasad Ghag, the Global Head of Media, Digital and Strategic Planning at Sanofi CHC. Sanofi's vision for the future is to "build a healthier, more resilient world."
This encompasses the protection of natural ecosystems within their business operations, including marketing activities. Their goal is to strike a balance between reaching their target audience and selecting media channels that have the least possible environmental impact while maximizing positive outcomes for their target audience.
Sanofi's Sustainable Media Strategy
Sanofi's sustainable media strategy focuses on reducing carbon emissions in specific advertising sectors, on programmatic advertising as well as high-resolution ads like YouTube videos.
They evaluate campaigns not only based on basic advertising metrics like clicks, impressions, click-through rates but also identify and eliminate carbon-intensive, less effective websites created solely for advertising purposes.
These websites provide no value to the average user and solely display a large number of ads. Their planning and tracking ads on Google, Meta, and TikTok.
Quote from Sanofi's Media Head
"In 2024, we will not only measure the carbon footprint of our ads with the help of our partner companies, but we will also reduce it wherever possible to create a more sustainable and effective media strategy," stated Sanofi's media head.
A Giant Leap for Sustainable Marketing
As Neil Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Similarly, responsible marketing campaign planning now goes beyond just website development and data traffic, considering network type, user device, time stamps, and other previously overlooked data points.