Essence launches sustainable programmatic marketplace

WPP agency Essence has launched a sustainable programmatic marketplace that will build on the media decarbonisation framework announced in July by parent GroupM.

It aims to reduce the carbon footprint of advertising campaigns, and reward publishers that are actively addressing the climate crisis in their editorial coverage.

The marketplace consists of “trusted UK publishers with clear Net Zero strategies who have committed to decarbonising their media supply”. Unlike other initiatives in the market, Essence said publishers in its sustainable programmatic marketplace are focused on decarbonising their businesses with reduction and regeneration a priority, ahead of offsetting.

Essence has pledged that the marketplace will use the most direct programmatic supply chain currently available, removing intermediaries and other resellers that can increase the carbon emissions of a campaign unnecessarily.

The agency is also working with Scope3 to measure the carbon emissions of programmatic media within boundaries defined by GroupM. Scope3 measured the initial set of publishers included in the marketplace as delivering an average reduction of 33% in carbon emitted per impression.

GroupM and WPP have committed to decarbonise the network to reach Net Zero in direct operations by 2025 and its value chain by 2030, reducing absolute media value chain emissions by at least 50% by 2030.

WPP is merging Essence and MediaCom globally to create EssenceMediacom, but the businesses are remaining separate in the UK to manage client conflicts.