Responsible advertising for WildAid

A case study on meaningful consumer engagement through programmatic video with carbon emissions in mind

Problem 

Recognizing climate change as a major biodiversity threat a decade ago, WildAid began climate ad campaigning to connect and align with eco-conscious consumers, promoting further engagement in conservation initiatives that encourage emissions reduction at the consumer level. WildAid’s 3-year goal: Encourage 10% of US and Chinese consumers to reduce emissions by one metric ton per person, totaling 150 megatons of total avoided carbon emissions—equivalent to Switzerland’s annual emissions. 

Being relatively new to the programmatic inventory ad space and relying heavily on traditional linear media, WildAid aimed to diversify its media mix and integrate programmatic media inventory to achieve its goal of convincing 10% of the U.S. population to reduce personal emissions by one ton annually. But they also wanted to take the next step: reduce emissions from advertising.

Solution

As WildAid aims to implement sustainability into digital media buying, it partnered with ad-filtering pioneer eyeo to launch a pilot campaign with a learning agenda focused on achieving this goal. The task given by WildAid was to demonstrate that Acceptable Ads, a nonintrusive online advertising format, can drive quality website traffic while serving as a sustainable media solution. This aligns with eyeo's broader mission to transform online advertising into a more responsible form of media – by promoting fewer, better ads that drive meaningful engagement and are less carbon-intensive. By focusing on user-friendly, nonintrusive formats like click-to-play rather than autoplay video ads, eyeo aims to drive more meaningful engagement, thereby reducing environmental impact and enhancing user experience. 

This campaign seeks to show that programmatic advertising can achieve both data-driven advertising in real-time at scale while minimizing its environmental footprint. By adopting energy-efficient practices and optimizing ad delivery, WildAid can reach its audience in a way that aligns with its mission of sustainability while harnessing the power of individuals.

While other concepts have been tested as well with the involvement of partners which can all be read in detail in the full whitepaper we would like to emphasize one tactic in particular, which is click-to play video served via a Green Media Product (GMP) in partnership with SeenThis and Scope3.

Deep Dive: Click-to-Play Video

While video ads can be impactful, they can also be intrusive–especially auto-play video units–and contribute significantly to carbon emissions. Therefore, it is so important to use this type of media responsibly. Adopting SeenThis’ streaming technology is a good first step in curbing emissions, although it doesn't reach users who have agreed to see Acceptable Ads*. Those users have agreed to seeing fewer, less-intrusive ads but that does not include auto-play video ads.

However, SeenThis has a solution that can convert these ads into user-initiated ad units (referred to as Click-to-Play or C2P), which helps increase the video campaign’s reach by 10-20%* from views by ad-filtering users who have agreed to see fewer, less intrusive ads. The goal was to ensure that these video impressions reach only an interested audience, thereby minimizing unnecessary data transfer associated with creative delivery.

Both sets of video tags—click-to-play and auto-play—leveraged SeenThis’ video ad serving technology based on streaming, which means that almost no data will be transferred until the ad is in view and either starts auto-playing or initiated by the user.

The test group represented the majority of the volume (81%) and served C2P ad units (see here) via a Scope3-enabled Green Media Product (GMP). GMPs are curated, lower-carbon deals that exclude climate risk, ensuring campaigns avoid ineffective and high-emissions inventory. The two control groups served both C2P and auto-play ad units via the open market with no inventory restrictions.

*Acceptable Ads is an ad standard that is exceptionally researched and respects user experience while delivering real value to content publishers and online advertisers. The independent Acceptable Ads Committee governs it.

Results 

The campaign created meaningful engagement for WildAid. 17% of users that engaged with the ad visited WildAid’s website and spent on average 20% more time on the page.

“It would be hard to overemphasize the dire need for a wide array of sustainable solutions to put us on a path toward a livable future. From my perspective, this pilot embodies the ethos of what we're asking the public to do–live more sustainably–while we work hard to deliver our message in a more sustainable way," – Stephanie Hill, former Climate Marketing Strategy Lead

In terms of carbon emissions, the largest contributors in programmatic advertising stem from the ad selection process and energy-intensive formats like video. eyeo and SeenThis provided complementary solutions to address these two areas:

SeenThis focuses on reducing creative data transfer through more efficient ad serving. They provide an easy way to convert autoplay video ads into click-to-play video ads, which is required by the Acceptable Ads Standard. This approach further reduces emissions by ensuring that only users who choose to watch a video initiate playback, thereby starting the creative data transfer.  Leveraging SeenThis’ streaming technology for ad rendering has resulted in a 69% reduction in emissions for creative data transfer, representing a 14% decrease in total emissions.

eyeo’s programmatic media solution, Blockthrough, offers a Green Media Product (GMP) powered by Scope3, the industry’s leading collaborative sustainability platform providing carbon measurement and reduction solutions. Running the campaign with this approach reduced total emissions by 59% compared to running on open market inventory. This was accomplished by directly integrating with publishers and reducing the number of server requests and hops needed to choose which ads to serve—leading to a 71% decrease in emissions from the ad-selection process. 

In terms of climate risk, looking at the open market campaign, 11% of the impressions were delivered on inventory considered climate risk and accounted for a disproportionate 25% of the control groups’ emissions.

“Scope3 is proud to partner with eyeo and SeenThis to support WildAid's ability to grow awareness for protecting wildlife habits in a way that aligns with their mission and values. By leveraging Scope3 and eyeo technology, WildAid can deliver campaigns that emit less carbon while achieving their marketing goals. The collaboration highlights how purpose and performance go hand in hand, setting an industry standard for sustainable advertising.” - Joris Stevens, Global Head of Customer Success, Scope3

Outlook

Looking ahead, there are two areas for further exploration:

While the campaign utilized 6-second videos, these were too brief to provide meaningful insights into the impact of user-initiated video ads on completion rates. Exploring longer video formats will allow us to better assess differences in engagement.

The click-to-play format offers a promising avenue to reduce wasteful impressions, but it requires a distinct creative strategy compared to autoplay ads. Future initiatives will aim to refine this format for a higher, initial engagement with the ad-unit, narrowing the gap between wasteful auto-plays and deliberate, meaningful video starts.

Photo credit: Freepik