What are Advertised Emissions?
- ishanip6
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Advertised emissions is a way of assessing the amount of greenhouse gases generated by the uplift in sales of products and services driven by an advertising campaign.
Advertised emissions is a way of asking a much bigger question about advertising and climate. We typically think about how much carbon does it take to make and show an advertisement or campaign, rather than how much extra buying did this advertisement cause, and what did that buying cost the planet.
The distinction that matters here is demand versus delivery. Most conversations about advertising's carbon footprint stop at production and distribution, the servers, the screens, the printing. Advertised Emissions goes further upstream, into the far messier territory of what people were persuaded to buy in the first place, not the emissions from making or showing the ad itself.
What problem is it trying to solve?
The idea comes from the campaign group Purpose Disruptors, who make the case that advertising's real climate impact isn't about the mechanics of showing an advertisement, it's about influence.
Their argument is that advertising shapes what people want and buy. This deserves its own carbon accounting, entirely separate from operational emissions. Their headline number for the emissions in the UK resulting from advertised products and services is above 200 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in a single year, with growth outpacing the rest of the economy.
Are Advertised Emissions an agreed standard?
It's still a live debate as it's tackling something genuinely hard to measure: advertising's role in shaping demand itself. Major trade bodies representing advertisers and agencies have offered a considered counterview, arguing the methodology can overstate advertising's impact by not fully accounting for something called displacement. Displacement is the idea that most advertising doesn't create demand out of nowhere, it mostly just moves an existing sale from one brand to another.
Does displacement really change the numbers that much?
Potentially, yes. Trade bodies such as the Advertising Association (AA) or Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) argue that a lot of ad spend is really about market share, winning a customer from a competitor, rather than market growth, persuading someone to buy something they otherwise wouldn't have bought at all. Count every sale following an ad as new demand caused by that ad, and you risk overstating emissions that would likely have happened regardless of the campaign. But the counterview is that displacement doesn't fully capture advertising's effect either. It holds up reasonably well for mature, static categories, like cars, where most people already own one and are simply choosing between brands. It's less convincing for categories that are actively growing, like cheap flights or fast fashion, where advertising may be doing more than redistributing existing customers, arguably helping to grow the whole market, encouraging people to fly more often or buy more than they otherwise would.
So the real disagreement isn't whether displacement exists, both sides agree it does, to some extent. It's about how much of advertising's effect is displacement versus genuine new demand, and nobody has a fully agreed way to split that number yet. That's the unresolved bit at the heart of the debate.
What's it actually useful for, in practice?
Even without full industry agreement, some agencies are already using Advertised Emissions to look at their own client portfolios, identifying which clients or sectors carry higher climate exposure, and where creative and strategic input could help support a shift toward lower-carbon alternatives.
The Bigger Picture
At ZeroBees, we help organisations work through this still-evolving question, not just what their media costs to produce, but what their advertising may be helping to drive, so sustainability conversations stay grounded, balanced, and useful for everyone involved.
References
Purpose Disruptors -Advertised Emissions
ISBA -Advertised Emissions Will Not Help Our Industry Reach Net Zero (Stephen Woodford, Paul Bainsfair, Phil Smith)
Campaign -Ad chiefs warn: 'Advertised emissions' won't help our industry to reach net zero
LBB Online -Advertising Sector Leads the Way Applying New Race to Zero Framework
RSM UK -Sustainability Hot Topics in the Advertising Industry
Need support on your sustainability journey?
ZeroBees helps advertisers and agencies make sense of Advertised Emissions alongside carbon, GMSF, claims and AI governance. We turn complex data and emerging debates into clearer decisions, stronger evidence and more confident client conversations. Book a discovery call to see how we could support your Responsible Media journey.
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