Sustainable products are booming. Meanwhile, sustainability is the most controversial topic in the advertising industry.From concept to production to broadcast – the global advertising industry produces millions of tons of CO2 emissions each year.

For example: a simple sponsored Instagram ad with 20 million impressions alone, is responsible for around 5 tons of CO2.

When we began to build the platform, German companies invested €25 billion net in advertising, according to the ZAW, creating a significant and measurable carbon footprint. As brands and products are becoming more sustainable, it is time for the media industry to follow suit.

Between 2019 and 2022, the advertising industry‘s emissions have risen by 11%. Today 32% of each person‘s carbon footprint comes from the ads they see and receive. latest research identifies three major contaminating phases in online advertising: the creative process, which includes travel, filming, and post-production; media broadcasting, with viewing or tools that support those processes; and targeting, with the increasingly complex technology that helps determine to whom each ad is shown. In addition to developing sustainability standards for the media industry, our aim is to promote a cross-industry discussion on sustainability. The development of a product that can be initiated easily and used without barriers by various media partners in everyday media bookings. Since a combination of climate protection and entrepreneurship is our main vision our step was about growth, too.

GreenGRP - an open initiative that offers media to offset the CO2 emissions of all campaign components with certified climate protection projects. When booking a campaign, advertisers can choose to have their advertising impact (GRP = Gross Rating Point) be climate neutral. In order to provide a suitable basis for our strategy, we collaborated with Germany‘s largest media companies and publishing houses. Our calculation algorithm was fed with data

collected over many years from numerous media partners. The datasets for material, distribution and production of all media channels were made available by our partners. While all involved partners are usually competing with each other they aggreed on working with ClimatePartner on a new industry standard to offset media. In addition, the close cooperation with the media houses was very important in order to increase acceptance in the market.

GreenGRP was launched with the first ever climate neutral ad break in Germany, Italy, France and Austria. Since then, the initiative has garnered immense support, with TV networks, radio stations, and publishing houses completely transitioning to GreenGRP. Each advertising block both in radio and TV of ARD - Germanys largest public broadcasting group - is 100% compensated via GreenGRP.

The unprecedented media partner coalition has created a new standard for sustainability in the industry, with more than 6,000 clients from over 60 countries already using GreenGRP. To date, GreenGRP has offset more than 5,125 tons of CO2 emissions. The initiative has achieved a remarkable feat of bringing together the biggest competing media houses to work towards a common goal of sustainability in the industry.

In addition, certification of climate-neutralised advertising can even generate new business: Three quarters of the decision-makers surveyed are also certain that sustainable media planning has a positive influence on the brand, the target group and the competition. The Green GRP calculation model is freely available to all market partners. Our vision: Brand advertising will become completely CO2-neutral. If all market participants join in, at some point everyone will only place climate-neutral campaigns.