Green About Media is back for 2023 and this week, we explore a new type of industry; Carbon Intelligence providers.
We hear from Cedara CEO and Global Advisor David Shaw and Eric Shih and what role Carbon Intelligence plays in shifting the global economy toward a sustainable economy. There is a marked shift across all areas of the economy and as with any revolutionary change, those that act fast and change with the tide will come out on top and those that sit on the sidelines and make excuses will suffer.
In this episode of the podcast Eric and David talk about the changing landscape and what businesses need to do in order to catch the boat.
This podcast is brought to you by The Digital Distillery
Written by Ara Almada
Produced & Engineered by Phil McDowell
Executive Producer Nadia Koski
Project Managers Dennis Kirschner & Stefanie Leonardi
You can contact The Digital Distillery on podcast@the-digital-distillery.com or visit our website & check out our other podcasts
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome back to Green About Media, the show where we explore, investigate, and…do our best to inform about the rise and shift of sustainable consciousness and action around the digital media industry. And this week, this first episode of 2023, we are going to do something a little bit different and interview two people who are involved in a brand new, but already booming kind of commercial industry.
We doing camera on or off?
As more companies are setting emissions reduction goals in line with the Paris agreement, a need has arisen across a broad section of industries, for the accurate measurement of one’s own green house gas [or carbon] emissions and those of the supply chain that a company utilises.
So we are a carbon intelligence software platform really built for any industry but specifically we're focusing on media and advertising
Cedara is one of these new platforms who offer a service helping companies to measure and reduce their carbon emissions all along their supply chain. These kinds of companies have started cropping up in response to the shifting commercial environment around us, really only over the last few years.
We're a climate tech company, providing carbon intelligence for the media industry.
But ultimately, we want to measure the carbon footprint for the entire industry. So all factors in the supply chain down from you know brands and agencies through vendors and ultimately publishers and find a way to make that data actionable. So we're actually building a path ultimately to net zero helping people reduce over time.
This is Eric
Eric Shih. I'm the Global Advisor at Cedara.
And this is David Shaw
I'm CEO and Co-Founder of Cedara.
And between them they had a combined experience in the digital media and ad-tech spacejust shy of 40 years, before they each decided to make the shift into the world of sustainability.
I've been very passionate about this subject, you know, around sustainability, and really been asking myself over the years is, you know, how do I add value? You know, how do I take my expertise, and, you know, accelerate sustainability in the media industry.
My path to sustainability is somewhat similar to David, but a bit more personal You know, I've been fortunate enough to work in the media and advertising space for over 20 years, had a great career. I have kids on the way so for me, so thinking about the future, and how do we make a better planet for them for their, you know, lifetimes.
So why the need for this kind of service now? And, since it’s a business, where exactly is the money?
The world is on an unsustainable path. And everyone will need to take action in order to change our trajectory.
We are in the midst of shifting the entire existing global economy into a new sustainable economy, which, you know, over over really the next few decades, we're right at the beginning. And, you know, this is a shift of trillions of dollars when you're talking about, you know, all industries, right, this is happening everywhere, not just in media, this is happening globally, right. And there's going to be a lot of winners, for the ones that embrace sustainability at the, at the early stages, right. And when there's a lot of winners, there's also a lot of losers, that those are the ones that, you know, sit on sidelines and watch or ignore, you know, maybe for bottom line purposes or other areas.
Money is important. Profit is important. Simply because business doesn’t exist without it. And while profit and greed is, in large part, what got us on this unsustainable path, it’s also the thing, and not ideology in and of itself that can get us off it.
According to stats from Wharton’s Baker and NYU Stern, 68% of people in the US are willing to pay more for products and services that support the environment rather than exploit it. And companies that offer sustainable products and services, experienced 5 times the growth speed of those that don't.
Since the beginning of this century, right, sort of past 20 years, you know, a lot of of investments have been going into hard tech solutions, whether it's for let's say decarbonizing the grid, so things like solar, wind and carbon sequestration, right, we talked about tunes of billions of dollars. And, you know, which, which is great, we need that, and that needs to scale up. You know, but that takes that takes years. But we're now starting to see a major investment into digital companies that are talking, tackling climate, and that do you think the solutions will have a major impact on accelerating our efforts to make a difference. And the great thing about digital companies in the climate tech space is that they can, you know, the on ramp is fast, and they can scale up very fast,
So what exactly does it mean to be sustainable in a digital environment? And further, in a business environment?
Sustainability is often used in reference to the environmental, social and economic impacts of human activities and systems. And the goal is to create a balance between these three pillars in a way that allows for long term prosperity, and well being.
The only way to have a successful business that has longevity, I think longevity is key, right, is to run it sustainably.
Right. So there is Sustainable in terms of ‘operating a business that can sustain itself’ and there's sustainable in terms of natural human resources. And as the figures show, these two definitions are actually becoming inextricably linked. Put another way and looking into the not too distant future, if your business isn’t sustainable, it simply won’t succeed in the long term.
If you actually look at the average lifespan of a s&p 500 company, today, it's about 20 years, which is actually a lot lower. Now versus it was decades ago, which is, which is, which is interesting. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that they consume more than they produce, which is clearly unsustainable, as it creates an imbalance.
At the forefront of sustainability today, it's, it's doing business, that's not just good for the bottom line, but good for the planet.
We could say that the Digital Advertising industry as we know it today is fairly recent and has already had a number of issues raised and addressed, the most recent one being privacy. Now it seems that the next thing to tackle is the environmental and social impact that digital and advertising has. And it starts with the carbon footprint.
we've seen fraud, we've seen brand safety, diversity, inclusion, all of which are very important. And now, you know, you're seeing carbon emissions at the front and centre, right. And you're seeing this everywhere.
From that trend is we're starting to see the world's largest brands. They're, you know, they're they're scratching their head saying, Okay, we need to start taking action, right? There's regulatory requirements, you know, this, especially out of Europe, students soon in the US. With with carbon reporting, you're starting to see a lot of consumer pressure. And that's just going to keep getting, you know, there's going to just be continuing more pressure.
They see the trends, including the market advantage of acting now, as well as the potential challenges if they don't.
And brands are moving on this, big and small. They are actively setting targets and implementing plans in order to get there.
Brands are starting to set up Net Zero targets, I believe it's about 35% of the Fortune 2000 have a net zero target that that's, that's from the last that when I looked at it about a few months ago. So it's probably increased. But, you know, there there, in order to achieve net zero, that means you need to clean all the supply chains, right, you need to get negate all the emissions across the organisation. And the only way for brands to truly achieve Net Zero is to understand your supply chain.
And in order to achieve any of this, it comes right back to measurement. Measurement is key in enabling a business to, not only measure the success of their efforts, but to set realistic targets in the first place.
It's not just you know, why do we need to measure, you know, emissions from digital advertising, we need to measure emissions from every industry, you heard the probably statistic that's been thrown around that the internet contributes three to 5% of total global emissions, something that's similar to what the airline industry is doing. Yes, that that's, that's probably true. And that measurement is happening now. So we can figure out what the actual impact is from both the internet and all digital advertising. But in my opinion, is that you know, every industry has an impact on emissions. And we all like we sort of talked about the beginning is we all need to do our part and take action. It's kind of disingenuous for anyone to say that, Oh, the internet, or digital advertising has a small impact. So it's not really that important that we shouldn't we should really be focusing on it, in my opinion, is just kicking the can down the road, you know, putting the burden on someone else, when we could all make a difference today, and you don't make an impact at a holistic level if everyone is not participating. So whether it's heavier industries, whether it's digital industries, everyone needs to take action, and you can't take action unless you measure.
So accurate measurement and understanding of where your carbon emissions actually are is absolutely crucial to the success of a sustainable business, but that obviously doesn’t get you there on its own. It needs to be coupled with effective strategies and action.
The good news is that, you know, digital platforms are in a better position to accelerate their path to net zero versus legacy industries.
We hear a lot about offsets. But to be honest they have been used as a bit of an ‘easy-out’ to create sustainable optics around an organisation. While a good start, used by themselves they just aren’t particularly effective.
So, offsets should really be used either as a temporary solution while you are creating and implementing your carbon reduction initiatives or as an option when you can no longer reduce your carbon footprint.
However, you really need to be careful when choosing a company that offers offsetting and make sure they represent genuine carbon reductions and not just projects that look good on paper but then are just random tree planting certificates.
There actually is a definition of a net zero standard by science based targets, which is industry organisation, global organisation, that sort of dictating and how you get to net zero. And offsets, you know, can only contribute up to five or 10% of, quote, unquote, reduction. If you're your mission is ultimately true reduction, as David mentioned, will take time but that's what really gets you to, too. zero emissions, right switching to renewables, for example. I know, as a first step, the advertising industry has been heavily focused on offsets, and it is the short term path to, to see make some change and make improvement. But I think we all need to align sort of along the lines of that net zero, right pushing the the industry towards this zero emission target. That's the ultimate goal. The first thing you need to do as an industry is measure, which is the first step today for everyone needs to do before we can even talk about getting.
I think it's both you have to do both. I think reduction is more long term. You know, especially for a lot of industries where, you know, it takes years, and in some cases, it's not even been invented yet. Right. Which, which, there's a lot of r&d going into it.
Carbon emissions are, are just like David mentioned, just another pillar. What better media shouldn't be your ads should be viewable, they shouldn't be fraud free, they should be in brand safe environments. And ultimately, they should be low carbon emissions.
As is true with any new technology or priority in an organisation, education is key as a starting point.
I think the best way to educate yourself is to, you know, really, like start digging into your own dataset. So measuring your own business and case studies, that's, that's also important.
Once you understand, once you see what's happening across your business, you can, then you can start modelling out what your, your carbon output is, per impression, right, and you can really get an understanding of that, that impression and that impression intensity, to, you know, really start speaking about your foot the footprint of your campaigns.
These advertising associations with cross industry cross vertical associations in energy science based targets greenhouse gas protocol, like things that companies more broadly across the world are adopting is something that in the advertising industry ultimately needs to be involved in. And that's how you really educate yourself on on really climate activity and climate impact.
Sustainability has evolved as a priority initiative in many industries for long-term investment and strategy. This is no different for digital industries, and therefore digital advertising.
Digital advertising may not be an obvious culprit in big environmental issues, but as you’ve heard in our previous episode it does have a big impact and even it if wasn’t that big, the move to a more sustainable future can only be for the better, but it requires participation from all businesses.
In a climate study done in January 2020 by Ad Net Zero, it was estimated that operational CO2 equivalent emissions from the U.K. digital advertising industry alone exceeded 84 thousand metric tons per year. This study led to the estimation that the digital advertising industry could exceed 1 million tons per year of CO2 emissions.
Currently, there are many initiatives with the goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions from all activities associated in advertising, with several key players now working to make this a reality, such as our guests from Cedara.
I am really happy to see more companies in the space that are making sustainability a top consideration factor for future tech collaborations.
Sustainability isn't just good for the planet; it's also good for business. Digital advertising companies that invest in sustainable practices are taking into consideration the principal value of all of their stakeholders—employees, customers, partners and investors. Showcasing that companies are mindful of their future and at the same time moving forward in their own growth.
Thank you to David Shaw and Eric Shih from Cedara. If you want to learn more about them you check out the website at Cedara, that C E D…… dot io where you can request a demo of their software if your business is ready to take on the carbon challenge.
If you want to read more into the subject Ara has put together some articles for further reading in the shownotes. Other than that you can contact us at podcasts@the-digital distillery.com and don’t forget to check out our other shows on the network.
Research for this episode was done by Ara Almada. The executive producer is Nadia Koski, keep an eye out for her own brand new show coming out in March on women in leadership. Produced and engineered by me Phil McDowell, and led by Stefanie Leonardi and Dennis Kirschner.
That's it for today but we will be back here with more digitally sustainable topics and two weeks time.
Until then…