Ben Baker - Managing Director APAC for Vistar Media
As pledges for carbon neutrality have accelerated over recent years, the pressure is on for those brands to find more sustainable alternatives in all areas, including advertising. For those managing Out of Home (OOH) campaigns, digital displays offer great advantages in sustainability.
The Digital Out of Home (DOOH) category provides the opportunity for brands to showcase multiple and evolving messages without the requirement of materials in production, installation and removal.
Consider too that in an era where context is key, brands must quickly evolve in response to their social environment and potential changes to the context of their audiences. So, for any brand that needs to pivot mid-campaign, DOOH provides the opportunity to modify a message without any significant additional environmental impact.
There’s an additional level of due diligence that media buyers can consider, which is the environmental impact and the approach to sustainability of each media owner. Of course, sustainability policies are not uniform and can be hard to compare side by side, so these need to be considered carefully.
EV charging stations provider Jolt, for example, runs a business that’s itself considered to be sustainable. This company operates DOOH screens that help the company to fund its free charging service for EVs in Australia.
For brands that want to run carbon-neutral campaigns, advertising with Jolt may be a no-brainer. Other media owners offering ad space in prime real estate may run businesses that are not primarily focused on sustainability, yet they adhere to highly sustainable practices - such as energy-efficient LED displays, incorporating solar energy, and more - making their business best in class'.
You can see why it's very hard to compare sustainability policies side by side with media owners whose business is very different from one another, but advertisers committed to net-zero campaigns can begin to develop rubrics for evaluation.
As more and more media owners convert their static inventory into digital, the entire advertising market will become more sustainable, helping brands to run campaigns with a lower carbon footprint.