How to measure and reduce carbon emissions from social advertising

Every day, consumers around the globe are spending an average of 143 minutes on platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. This trend has captured the attention of marketers, who are projected to invest up to $76.4 billion in social media advertising in 2024.

Given this substantial investment, it’s crucial for advertisers to understand what sets social media apart as an advertising medium. These unique characteristics also inform strategies for measuring and minimizing carbon emissions associated with social media campaigns.

Here are some key ways that social media differs from other digital channels:

1. A less complex ecosystem: While web, app, and CTV offer millions of impressions with countless publishers vying for your ad dollars, social media is a much less complex ecosystem, composed of just a handful of major players.

2. Fewer, but platform specific formats: Ad formats vary depending on the platform, but by and large the variety of formats is more limited on social than other channels. Despite this, individual platforms offer a specific array of ad formats designed solely for their unique user experience.

3. Direct buys: While programmatic structures the majority of ad exchanges on other channels, social inventory is bought through direct deals with the platforms themselves, meaning fewer players are involved.

Social media’s singularity among advertising channels impacts the way it emits carbon—as well as how to measure (and reduce) emissions.

Where social emissions come from

To understand important carbon emissions factors to consider for social and messaging ads, it is important to have a grasp on the life cycle of a digital ad.

In general, CO₂ from digital ads stems from the production, distribution, and use phases (see figure below). However, on the majority of social platforms, there is a single seller of inventory, meaning during distribution there are far fewer emissions from the supply chain.

That means that there are different levers to pull when decarbonizing social ads, and those levers often involve thinking about how to optimize the emissions within a particular platform.

On social, the main factors that drive emissions are creative delivery (length of a video ad), user engagement (time spent, screen time), and location/time of day an ad is served (especially in countries where the grid mix is dependent on fossil fuels). Brands can measure these categories to understand how to reduce their social advertising’s carbon footprint.

How to measure the factors that drive social emissions

Scope3’s model for measuring social emissions uses first-party data from social platforms (contributed data) and publicly available data from sources like corporate sustainability reports. When computed by the model, this creates a full, activity-based picture of the gCO₂PM of each social platform.

Once the emissions data is computed, brands can look more closely at their own advertising activities by providing their campaign delivery data. This can expose what aspects of their social advertising portfolio are producing the most carbon, and—importantly—how those aspects correlate with ad performance. Once brands have measured their social emissions, they can take steps to reduce them while optimizing for KPIs.

On social media, the steps brands and agencies can take to reduce emissions are limited to the variables over which they have control. So while media distribution may drive the lion’s share of emissions for social due to both corporate emissions and consumer device data transfer emissions, it can’t be optimized by advertisers alone.

What brands do have control over is creative delivery. According to a recent study on measuring social emissions in partnership with Snap and EssenceMediacom (EMC), creative delivery drove nearly a quarter of brand advertisers’ Snap campaign emissions — which amounted to 97 metric tons of CO2e, equivalent to 48.5 roundtrip flights from London Heathrow to JFK. So, brands that measure and reduce CO2e in creative delivery can make a huge impact on the emissions of their social ads.

Focusing delivery on formats that incur a lower creative delivery gCO₂PM but delivery against key KPIs can lower emissions overall for a social campaign without impacting performance. For Snap activity measured in the study, the Lens format was a lower gCO₂PM alternative to video formats, driving engagement as well as awareness from brand study results seen. The campaigns that leveraged the Lens format saw 19% lower creative delivery gCO₂PM overall than campaigns that didn’t.

Measuring social emissions will enhance your whole marketing program

Having holistic measurement across all digital buys allows marketers to compare social to other channels like web, app, DOOH, and so on. A good mantra to keep in mind is “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Measuring shows brands how to optimize within channels, and employing bespoke measurement practices for each channel will give brands the information they need to decarbonize their advertising activities on the whole.

In the same way that social is bought differently from other channels, the measurement and reduction options for social are unique. However, one thing is always true: comparing efficiency and emissions, brands can optimize their marketing portfolio based on what’s most effective, efficient, and sustainable.

Specifically, on social, brands can start to optimize for:

1. The platforms on which they advertise: for example, by allocating more spend to platforms with lower emissions
2. The formats: for example, multi-format campaigns have performed better than single-format campaigns in testing
3. Network connectivity: Optimal data transfer by device type or wifi or fixed network
4. Timing of campaigns: High engagement and low emissions by time of day

Moreover, while the specific variables available for reducing emissions on social may differ from those of other channels, the overall methodology brands can use to slash emissions is the same: eliminate high-emitting activities that also don’t contribute much to driving business outcomes, and double down on low-emitting activities that do play a big role in driving outcomes. By following that philosophy, brands will slash their emissions on social — and make social advertising work better for their business, too.