Driven by sustainability and ability to measure campaigns, OpenX partnered with carbon intelligence platform Cedara to customize and provide transparency into offset emissions in media buys.
“Chief sustainability officers at brands have started to lean into this,” said Joseph Worswick, vice president of EMEA, global head of sustainability at OpenX, an omnichannel supply side platform (SSP).
He said conversations in the past year have moved toward showing how and where the campaigns begin to offset emissions caused by carbon dioxide.
Words like “sustainability” and “responsible advertising” may sound like the latest buzzwords, but they are a real focus for most ad companies, brands and agencies these days.
People care about the environment, Worswick said, and dollars are moving in that direction.
Individual brands ask for this. Younger employees working in advertising love this. And as agencies consolidate the number of partners, many take emissions into consideration.
More than half of Fortune 500 companies have a net zero or carbon emissions reduction target. They’re doing it not to reach the goal overnight, but over time.
“Sometimes companies will buy offsets on a specific media campaign, or they might invest in a sector, but don’t know where the money goes,” said Eric Shih, COO at Cedara.
Cedara’s platform lets companies like OpenX look through the marketplace of more than 60 curated offset projects and select ones to add into a portfolio. It helps to diversify media investments across technologies and sectors, and provides transparency to see what projects are in the portfolio. It also lets media buyers see prices.
“It’s a challenge to try and stop the environment from getting worse,” Shih said. “This target during the next seven years is to eliminate, or lessen, global warming. This is where the advertising industry can make an impact.”
By pairing Cedara’s media emissions reduction and offset capabilities with OpenX’s status as the first Net-Zero adtech company, this partnership leads in sustainability initiatives.
This integrated solution enables media buyers to sync organizational emissions data with media buys, access curated and third-party certified projects, achieve transparency and customization into how and what offsets are leveraged through the creation of custom offset portfolios, seamlessly onboard and measure emissions from OpenX’s campaigns.
