The Path to Measuring and Slashing Social Advertising Emissions

As brands prioritize sustainability, measuring carbon emissions across every advertising channel has become essential to responsible media planning. Our recent partnership with Snap and EssenceMediacom underscores how collaboration within the industry is driving key learnings to deliver carbon reduction, media efficiency, and campaign performance.

Snap is already a leader in sustainable advertising. Over the last several months, we helped them take their work further to discover the variables that most affect social ad emissions — and how to reduce the carbon impact of campaigns on the platform. In partnership with EssenceMediacom, we teamed up to measure emissions from four top advertisers on Snap in Germany, the UK, the US, and France.

The study produced a wealth of data revealed here for the first time that can guide brands, agencies, and other social platforms that want to measure and reduce their emissions.

How Scope3, Snap, and EssenceMediacom measured emissions

The goal of the study was to develop a baseline carbon emission view for Snapchat campaigns and creative formats. To do so, EssenceMediacom shared campaign data from four of its major brand clients running on Snap, for a total of 467 million impressions measured.

In addition to measuring gCO₂PM (grams of carbon for 1000 impressions), Scope3 and EssenceMediacom monitored performance metrics to identify where carbon could be reduced without impacting performance. Indicators such as eCPM (effective cost per mile), video view rate, video completion rate, clicks/impressions, were measured and analyzed.

What we discovered about social advertising emissions

With fewer platforms to choose from, and a far simpler media supply chain of partners — no unnecessary hops and auctions like with display — decarbonization looks very different on social channels like Snapchat.

Digging into the emissions data for these campaigns revealed which components of social advertising were 1) producing the most CO₂ emissions and, 2) could be optimized for performance and decarbonization.

Emissions from media distribution are a big factor for social due to both corporate emissions and consumer device data transfer emissions. It is not always possible to optimise by network or device on social (depending on which platform is being used and campaign set up), so for opportunities to reduce, we had to look to the second largest source of emissions, creative delivery emissions to find the largest opportunities for reduction.

We looked into different variables such as the location and date of ad delivery, the size and duration of an ad, and the engagement with the ad (for interactive formats) and how those contributed to overall campaign emissions.

Insights from the Snap and EssenceMediacom study:

• Across the 467 million impressions measured, campaigns drove 97 metric tons of carbon emissions. Snap emissions performance was already below benchmark in all four markets, based on ‘Social’ channel market benchmark in the Scope3 Collaborative Sustainability Platform. On average the campaigns were 26% below social gCO₂PM benchmarks as measured by Scope3, highlighting Snap’s carbon efficiency within the social space. Much of this is attributed to Snap being a more carbon efficient app design at the core.
• Snap ad formats performed better from a gCO₂PM perspective than comparative formats on social (where comparable formats were available). Snap’s unique Len’s format proved one of the most efficient of Snap’s formats from a gCO₂PM perspective. Campaigns that included a Lens format had 19% lower gCO₂PM for creative delivery than campaigns that didn't contain Lens. Interestingly, in addition to being carbon-efficient, lenses also delivered high engagement and brand uplift performance.
• Commercial non-skippable formats, too, drove higher engagement without spiking emissions. They saw 10x higher video view rate (VVR) than Snap skippable video formats, with only 1.2x higher creative delivery gCO₂PM. Emissions are higher for skippable ads because they have a higher in view time.

Independently, Scope3 also looked into the nuances of multi-format campaigns. Diving into real campaign data across Scope3 clients, the team discovered that multi-format campaigns, which use a combination of video, static ads, and bespoke social formats may drive better performance with only slightly higher gCO₂PM.

Both the insights from the Snap and EssenceMediacom study, and Scope3’s supplementary research, highlight the reduction task with social is to balance different formats while ensuring optimal efficiency between carbon and performance. This can be done by using a tool like Scope3’s Media Reporting that provides a view of media emissions alongside performance, and partnering with your agency to create an action plan for integrating those insights into your media plan.

What brands that advertise on social should know

Efficiency gains can be made across any channel, and for media buyers that want to limit carbon and waste on social, here are four recommendations:

• Advertise on social platforms committed to sustainability: Look for social partners that are measuring their emissions and contributing data to holistically understand the carbon impact of their formats.
• Try leveraging multi-format campaigns: Campaign with Lens formats drove high engagement while proving more carbon efficient than video. Advertisers should test inclusion of formats like Lens when optimising for carbon reduction and performance goals.
• Consider optimal video lengths for performance: All video formats on Snap were more carbon efficient than comparative formats (on other social channels), however 6 second videos produce less carbon compared to 15 second videos. If longer video placements are to be used on social, ensure they are effective at delivering key messages to avoid any emission waste.
• Run multi-format campaigns: Consider testing multiple ad formats into your campaign as a way to boost ad performance while only incrementally raising carbon emissions, effectively “making carbon count.”

Measuring emissions from social advertising is uniquely complex due to the specific nature of the individual platforms. However, thanks to Snap and EssenceMediacom, we now have a robust picture of the ways carbon is distributed throughout the lifecycle of a social ad.

Media buyers should consider multi-format ad campaigns and innovative formats in order to run more carbon-efficient social media campaigns. By applying these insights to how ad are bought on social today, we stand to enhance both performance and sustainability across the entire social media ecosystem.