April 11, 2024 – Global sustaintech platform IMPACT+ today launched a new self-service solution that can help advertisers almost halve the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by their online video campaigns without making changes to their media planning. 

The company’s new Creative Optimizer enables marketers to significantly reduce the environmental impact of their digital ads by reducing the weight of their video creatives across various ad platforms.  

Digital ads contribute significantly to global GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. The digital industry recently overtook the aviation industry as one of the main contributors to global emissions – and is now close to passing the automotive sector. A sizeable proportion of these emissions come from the energy needed to power digital advertising, with a standard ad campaign emitting the same amount of CO2e as one person flying from Paris to Los Angeles (source: IMPACT+).  

IMPACT+ – a pioneer in helping marketers evaluate and reduce the carbon footprint of their digital campaigns – launched the Creative Optimizer to help marketers slash the emissions generated by their online video campaigns at scale without having an impact on brand metrics and campaign performance. Marketers simply upload the videos onto the company platform and receive lighter versions of the same asset.    

Available across all programmatic, social and video platforms, the Creative Optimizer can reduce GHG emissions for each asset by up to 40% (source: IMPACT+). This reduction figure is on top of the average optimisation provided natively in platforms such as Google, TikTok and Meta.  

Video optimisation, which reduces the asset weight without reducing perceived quality, is a highly effective practice in the fight to reduce digital advertising’s carbon footprint. For example, IMPACT+ used optimisation techniques to reduce the carbon emissions generated by a video campaign for Heineken brand Desperados by 29% without any impact on brand performance.    

HEINEKEN’s Head of Media Strategy Emily Moringue said: “At HEINEKEN, our ambition is to reduce our digital marketing carbon footprint, and for that, we have been working closely with IMPACT+ for the past couple of years to reduce our emissions. During this time, we’ve seen first-hand what a powerful lever creative optimisation can be in minimising the impact of our online ads, without affecting the overall brand and media performance of our campaigns. Having access to IMPACT+’s new self-service solution will be crucial in helping us scale our approach and meeting our sustainability goals.”   

Audrey Danthony, Chief Product Officer at IMPACT+, said: “Creative Optimizer is the perfect solution for advertisers looking to significantly reduce the emissions generated by their video campaigns and scale up their sustainability measures. Just by adding it to their day-to-day processes and best practices, media planers and marketers can drastically cut the carbon footprint of their campaigns without any impact on their media performance.”   

Creative Optimizer is the latest tool IMPACT+ has developed to enable global brands, agencies and ad networks to evaluate and minimise the greenhouse gas emissions generated by their online ads.   

Other solutions include its Environmental Sustainability Platform (ESP), which enables brands and agencies at any stage of their emission reduction journey to monitor digital advertising campaigns across ad platforms, social & programmatic, and identify levers to apply without affecting campaign performance.  

To find out more about the Creative Optimizer, email [email protected].