Is Google good? We asked Google, and its AI said, “yes,” so, sure.
Speaking of being good, this week Google announced a new tool to help advertisers measure and manage the carbon emissions of their ad campaigns. The offering, called Carbon Footprint for Google Ads, provides first-party data to marketers, enabling them to track campaign emissions across Google ad products, including DV360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Google Ads.
According to Google, advertisers will receive “account-specific estimates based on an individual account’s targeting, media mix, won and lost auctions, and more.”
Carbon Footprint’s reporting aligns with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which provides standards, guidance, tools, and training for businesses and governments to measure and manage climate-warming emissions. It also adheres to Ad Net Zero’s Global Media Sustainability Framework, of which Google is a founding member.
The tool is immediately available upon request to select advertisers (probably the bigger ones that care about emissions) and, according to Google, will become more widely available in the future.
Why This Matters:
The data on ad emissions is kind of all over the place (but not in a good way).
In 2023, for example, reports estimated that a single ad campaign could generate 70 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions—about the same as what seven people, on average, release into the atmosphere in a year.
For the average person, this data can be hard to interpret or relate to. But, as we said, that doesn’t mean the numbers are reassuring. What’s clear is that the overall trend is negative, and the industry needs to do more to support sustainability, even if it’s not a priority for the new administration or federal regulators.
That said, adtech often ties sustainability to more tangible issues. Take made-for-advertising (MFA) websites—they come with an emissions cost, but they also harm advertisers and the broader digital ecosystem in other ways. When adtech can couple sustainability with something a bit more adtech-y, we generally find that there’s more of a business case for it.
Experts React:
Google has some great quotes from industry experts and customers in its blog post announcing the launch of Carbon Footprint. See here via IAB Europe:
“As digital advertising stakeholders continue to consider their environmental impact, we’re seeing increasing signs of maturity across the ecosystem,” said Dimitris Beis, data analyst and sustainability lead at IAB Europe.
“Our research indicates that about half of businesses in the ecosystem are estimating the impact of digital media products and most of these have reported figures to clients.”
Our Take:
An interesting product launch—especially given the lack of government pressure around sustainability or ESG more broadly right now. Clearly, advertisers and brands care about this work, which is a good thing.
Interesting framing here: Google’s blog post is very Europe-centric, though it seems this offering is available to U.S. customers as well. Was this a strategic choice? Framing it around European regulators and consumer demand might be the safer route, especially given the shifting political landscape in the U.S., where making the case for sustainability could be more challenging right now.
One other thought: Will this data eventually be usable for ad targeting, curation, and optimization? And if so, how might that impact companies already working in this space, like Scope3?
