Dreaming of a greener Christmas: 5 ways to cut emissions from your festive ads
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. People are stocking up on Christmas food, buying presents for their loved ones and looking forward to the day they can eat their body weight in Quality Street.
But one Christmas tradition that is less talked about is the spike in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by festive ads during the busiest shopping period of the year.
It may be the season of comfort and joy, but it’s also the season when the environmental impact of digital advertising becomes almost as bloated as our waistlines.
Unlike Santa’s sleigh — which runs on either special reindeer carrots, elf magic or Christmas spirit, depending on which festive film you believe — the energy needed to power the online ad ecosystem has a huge carbon footprint.
It means, in the UK alone, carbon emissions during the festive period increase by an estimated 25-30% (source: Impact Plus). And it’s getting worse every year, as the battle for shoppers’ attention (and their Christmas pay packets) intensifies.
New data from the Advertising Association and Warc suggests UK adspend in the so-called “golden quarter” is set to increase 8% year on year — a record high.
Great for the sector but, without wishing to be The Grinch, such increases can also have an impact on global emissions.
So, while we’re dreaming of a white Christmas, what can we do to create a slightly greener one?
Well, with prime minister Sir Keir Starmer targeting an 81% reduction in emissions by 2035, here are some suggestions.
OK, the fact that you are reading this far suggests you are taking digital advertising’s impact on the environment seriously. But, unfortunately, you could be in a minority.
Not so long ago, cutting digital ad emissions was the talk of adland. But things have gone a little quiet of late, with Warc’s 2024 Programmatic Report finding that reducing emissions generated by their programmatic campaigns is not a priority for six out of 10 marketers, while over a third admit they have taken no action at all.
But why are people now saying “bah humbug” to reducing digital ad emissions? Studies have repeatedly shown that sustainable practices improve campaign performance and return on investment. Yet sustainability is often viewed as a cost, not an investment.
So, if headlines of devastating floods in Spain and snow taking record time to appear on Mount Fuji do not motivate people to act, maybe the introduction of stricter regulations, such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, will.
By making sustainability reporting mandatory, this regulation will elevate environmental concerns to a board-level priority for large companies.
Now, even if all you want for Christmas is a more sustainable digital ad ecosystem, you still need to know the size of the task ahead of you.
The good news is you don’t need Santa’s helpers to create a sustainability solution to help you measure the GHG emissions generated by your online Christmas campaigns.
Options already in the market include AdGreen’s calculator, which allows companies to calculate the emissions associated with their ad production projects, and our own Environmental Services Platform, which enables media buyers to granularly monitor the emissions generated by their online ad campaigns.
We all put on a bit of weight at Christmas — and it’s the same with festive ads.
From lavish, celebrity-fuelled productions to extended running times, brands go all out in the battle for the hearts and minds of Yuletide shoppers. But the file size of a digital creative asset has a significant impact on emissions. So what can you do to help?
Well, cutting the length of your videos is an obvious way to reduce emissions, as is using techniques like video compression.
You can also use tools such as Impact Plus’ Creative Optimizer — a self-service solution that minimises emissions by up to 30% without affecting campaign efficiency.
Marketers simply upload the videos on to the platform and receive lighter versions of that asset on top of the average optimisation provided natively in platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Meta.
The way you receive Christmas presents can make all the difference. And it’s the same with online ads. By optimising the way digital campaigns are delivered to consumers — including the devices they receive the ads on — marketers can drastically cut emissions.
For example, we recently worked with a programmatic partner that uses a carbon optimisation model to predict the carbon intensity of every bid opportunity.
So, by automatically identifying times of the day when ads use up less power, targeting users who are less carbon-intensive (such as those using Wi-Fi) and prioritising formats, lengths and ad placements that are more energy-efficient, you can reduce the environmental impact of your programmatic campaigns by as much as 20% (source: Impact Plus).
We get it: marketers are not climate scientists and there’s a lot of information to take on board.
Even looking at the latest Global Media Sustainability Framework, which was introduced to make things simpler, can sometimes be a little confusing to those who don’t work in the sustainability space.
And once you’ve understood the framework, applying it is a whole additional process. Collecting all the data and organising it for the evaluation is a significant task in and of itself, especially if you don’t have dedicated resource to manage the APIs and automate the process, let alone stay up to date as the framework evolves.
For this reason, we think it’s best to find the right partner that can lighten your load to help you focus on reducing your emissions rather than spending time measuring it.
Tackling the carbon footprint of your festive campaigns is a great first step, but the creation of a truly sustainable ad ecosystem will only be possible when marketers introduce strategies to reduce emissions all year round.
That will only happen with time, patience and dedicated resources. Brands and agencies need specialised training and access to tools that allow them to see first hand the impact the decisions they make with their media plans have on GHG emissions.
Only then will they be able to create best practices and processes to optimise the carbon efficiency of all their campaigns, not just a select few. And only then will real change happen.
After all, creating a sustainable digital ad ecosystem is not just for Christmas.