Ebiquity, Lumen Research, and Net Zero Media publish A Metric for Effective & Responsible Advertising, a report that puts advertising effectiveness and carbon emissions on the same scale.

The report introduces the Attention to Emissions (A/E) ratio: the attentive seconds an advertiser’s media earns for every gramme of CO2e it emits. Higher is better: more attention for less carbon.

Published during COP31 in Antalya (9-20 November), the study combines three datasets for the 2024-25 campaigns of ten UK advertisers: Ebiquity’s media investment data, Lumen’s attention data and Net Zero Media’s emissions estimates, using Ad Net Zero’s Global Media Sustainability Framework (GMSF).

Key findings

• Media choices make a big difference. The best advertiser earned more than five times as much attention per gramme of carbon as the worst.
• Radio scored highest. Its A/E ratio was roughly ten times the average across media, driven by the attention it earns per pound. The six advertisers with the highest ratios all used radio; the four lowest did not. Radio attention is estimated with Lumen’s audio model rather than eye tracking.
• TV came second. It produced the least carbon per pound of any medium.
• Print was the most carbon-intensive medium, at around two and a half times the average emissions per pound.
• Choices within a channel matter too. In digital, audio beat display and video, and direct buys beat programmatic ones. In print, magazines beat newspapers.

The partners stress that the findings are directional, not buying advice, and should be read alongside each campaign’s own objectives.

Michelle Morgado, managing director UK & Ireland, Ebiquity - "Advertisers are under increasing pressure to deliver commercial results, and sustainability will struggle to influence media investment decisions unless it makes commercial sense. We need to stop treating effectiveness and environmental impact as separate conversations. This research is an important step towards bringing them together, challenging the industry to rethink what good media investment should look like."

Mike Follett, CEO and co-founder, Lumen Research - "There’s no ad so expensive as one that gets entirely ignored. An unseen impression still carries a carbon cost, but delivers nothing in return. By counting attention alongside emissions, advertisers can cut avoidable waste and reward the media that earns attention most responsibly. That is good for the brand, the consumer and the planet."

Damien Thomson, CEO and co-founder, Net Zero Media - "Bringing carbon into planning is the next step in media accountability. The A/E ratio shows how much attention each gramme of carbon buys, so advertisers can make lower-carbon choices without sacrificing reach. The shift we need is to treat carbon as a finite budget, managed as rigorously as money."

Availability

The full report is free to download here.

The report recommends three steps for advertisers: establish the effectiveness of campaigns, measure the carbon their media plans produce using the GMSF, and evaluate the two together.

Lumen

Lumen Research is an eye-tracking technology company that is expanding our understanding of human attention, and helping brands to turn attention into action.   The company initially developed patented eye-tracking technology for creative attentio...

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