Agencies including adam&eveDDB, Havas UK, Publicis Groupe UK and Mullen Lowe Group have joined Unilever and Nestlé in agreeing to pay a quarterly advertiser levy to support the industry-backed AdGreen initiative.
AdGreen, part of the UK Advertising Association provides free resources, tools and training.
More than 750 members of the advertising community have completed AdGreen’s online training and in September, a carbon calculator will go live, helping agencies, production companies and service companies to measure the carbon impact of their projects and to identify the highest carbon producing activities.
To keep AdGreen’s resources, tools and training free at point of use, the voluntary levy is being introduced from June. It will currently be a recommended 0.25% of the cost to produce an advertising asset – or £2.50 per £1,000 of relevant spend.
The AdGreen team will review financials on an annual basis, with the levy percentage reducing as more advertisers decide to contribute.
Jo Coombes, AdGreen’s project director said: “It has been fantastic to see the swift response from the advertising industry to AdGreen’s call to collaborate with us. By attending our free training, using the online resources, signing-up for our newsletter and events – and now supporting the levy, the industry is showing the commitment that’s needed to tackle our environmental impact together.
“We are excited for the launch of our carbon calculator later on this year, which will allow the advertising production community to measure and then really understand how to reduce a production’s environmental impact.”
The AdGreen carbon calculator will be a valuable tool for organisations aligning with the Ad Net Zero initiative, which calls upon the industry to reduce the carbon impact of developing, producing and running UK advertising to real net zero by the end of 2030.
Contributions towards The AdGreen Levy, which has the full support of the Industry trade bodies including the APA, AOP, IPA and ISBA will be collected by UK based organisations providing production services directly to the advertiser (described as Principal Production Partners) and then passed on to AdGreen.
AdGreen joined forces with the Advertising Association in July 2020, launching in September that year to unite the advertising industry in eliminating the negative environmental impacts of advertising production.
Since September 2020, adam&eveDDB, APR (Advertising Production Resources), Google, Havas, MullenLowe, Publicis Groupe UK, Sky, WPP and Unilever have joined AdGreen’s advisory board.
It is unclear whether or not Google and Sky have also signed-up to the levy although an AdGreen spokesperson told Mediatel News: “All I can say is that both Google and Sky are funding partners of AdGreen, highly supportive of its plans and also of the wider Ad Net Zero action plan. With that in mind, I think it would be wrong to suggest they are not on board with this levy.”
