Ad Net Zero Annual Report 2023
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“Ad Net Zero exists to help all sectors of the industry to decarbonise and accelerate the promotion of more sustainable choices and behaviours at scale.”
We are publishing a review of our base to support and encourage all businesses in committing to credible, science-based targets; and to report on progress with the measurement of emissions and decarbonisation of the advertising industry. Working to the five-point action plan, we will reduce emissions and promote more sustainable products, services and behaviours.
This report is our baseline. You can use it as a snapshot of the industry. By reporting on our progress, we aim to hold ourselves, and each other, to account, strengthening our response to the climate emergency year-by-year until we see the change the science demands of us.
“The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report substantiates the dramatic impacts of climate change, and was called “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership” by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. The last decade was hotter than any period in the past 125,000 years.
The World Resources Institute’s analysis concludes that even if all of the national climate plans are fully implemented, we will fall short of the necessary reductions by a factor of six. The private sector therefore has an opportunity to accelerate climate action to avoid the much higher costs of inaction.
While advertising itself only directly accounts for around 2% of the world's emissions, advertising has an outsized impact on the other 98% - and is therefore responsible for enabling the shift in behaviour change the world so urgently needs.
--- Dr Bill Wescott
The data in this report has been taken from a variety of publicly available sources. These include our supporters’ commitments on their websites, their Science Based Targets Initiative submissions, and any publicly available company reports. Please note that for ANZ’s reporting purposes, holding companies, including its agency brands, count as 1 agency. The sample size used in our report was 109 companies: 17 advertisers, 26 agencies (including all 6 holding companies), 26 media owners, 6 production companies, 30 ad tech companies and 4 tech platforms.
At the present time supporters are free to choose any science-based methodology, (we encourage the use of those that include third-party verification), and for the purposes of this report, we are following the definitions from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi)*: