On April 13 2023, Sharethrough organized an event for over 250 attendees, 25 speakers across 160 companies from brands, agencies, publishers and ad tech companies. The stakeholders gathered for a full day event at the Edison Ballroom in New York City to learn about how the advertising industry can collaborate to become one of the first industries to reach net-zero carbon emissions.
The main goal of the event was for attendees to better understand the impact of media on sustainability, and most importantly, how our industry has the ability to turn conversations into actions and build a greener media ecosystem. By encouraging discussion with stakeholders from the entire supply chain, we were able to align on one of the industry's most important topics: sustainability in media.
The event included keynotes, fireside chats and panels with sustainability experts both in and out of the advertising industry. An important component we wanted to be mindful about was greenwashing. This is why we made sure to have various perspectives from different speakers which allowed us to open the stage for conversations rather than being outright promotional. The event kicked off with Noel Anderson, Chief Sustainability Officer of the American Red Cross, who provided a macro-view of how climate change is impacting humans across the globe. Following this, we organized panels bringing together professionals from the digital advertising supply chain including brands, agencies, DSPs and publishers. Since all actors of the digital advertising supply chain generate carbon emissions in their own way, it was important for us to be able to generate these discussions to find solutions. On the brand and agency side, running an advertising campaign with millions of impressions will generate emissions, while publishers have the responsibility of delivering the end product to users on the web. Some examples of topics discussed included: "Building a Sustainable and Profitable Brand" led by agency panelists, "How IAB Tech Lab Best Practices and Standards Can Help Lower Emissions" with key insights as to how we will reach a common standard adopted by the entire supply chain, and "Less is More: Can Publishers Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Impacting Revenue?" by publisher panelists.
One of our main challenges was to utilize sustainable practices. This included negotiations with the venue to serve vegan/vegetarian food, reusable tableware and cutlery, and even avoiding coffee lids from being handed out. Our requests were quite uncommon the venue, but we were able to create synergies and work as a team. In addition to this, we provided attendees with biodegradable wooden pencils with seeds at the base for them to take back home and plant. We also provided recycled notebooks, recyclable paper name tags and made sure to recycle the lanyards at the end of the event. We kept asking ourselves: "Do we really need this?"; "Does this represent our mission?".
We also wanted to make sure we compensate for and offset all carbon emissions generated by the event, including hotspots like energy, catering and travel to the venue.
The Green Media Summit helped to strengthen our position and credibility with our own sustainable goals, but also got others to do the same. The standing-room only event gathered 255 attendees from 160 different companies, who remained until the very end of the event to hear from 25 speakers across the industry. In terms of coverage (one week post-event only), we've been mentioned in 6 articles in the media and have had over 35+ LinkedIn mentions.
We also sent a feedback survey to all attendees asking to identify their key takeaways from the event. Responses included “the need for immediate action as well as standardization in measurement”, and “adoption needs buy-in from all levels throughout the industry stakeholders” amongst others.
An important component we promised was to measure, reduce and offset the footprint of the entire event. We partnered with net-zero experts 51toCarbonZero to gather primary data for emission calculation, including a survey to gather attendee travel plans. By doing this, we raised the awareness of the impact of travel and we were able to identify that most people traveled by public transport (66%), followed by train (31%) and flights (11%) creating a total of 8.19 tonnes of Co2 equivalents.
