Dentsu Unlocks Carbon Insights for Advertising Recall and Effectiveness

March 22, 2023 – Dentsu UK&I today announced that the next evolution of its pioneering Effective Attention offer, which enables brands to target the right amount of audience attention for maximum effect, will now also help clients understand the carbon impact of these digital advertising campaigns.

Effective Attention launched in April 2022 and is based on dentsu UK&I’s unique understanding that just as not all impressions are equal, the same is true of attention.

Exclusively available to dentsu clients, the tool enables real-time measurement and optimisation toward inventory which will maximise campaign effectiveness. By reading live ad and environmental characteristics of an impression, the tool can estimate the likely amount of attention paid to it by the viewer and whether that volume of attention is sufficient to drive effect.

Today, for the first time, Effective Attention is being augmented with dentsu’s proprietary media carbon calculator data. This new dashboard feature will help brands better understand the relationship between ‘carbon’ and ‘effect’ when considering the true cost of delivering effective attention, adding an extra signal to help them track and measure against any particular carbon budget they may have.

This new view in the Effective Attention live dashboard powered by Lumen marries the true impact of media, alongside the true carbon cost of achieving it. This will better enable teams and clients to discuss the ‘effect to carbon’ ratio of digital campaigns, with a view to maximising the outcomes with minimal impact to the planet.

Hamish Nicklin, CEO, Media, dentsu UK&I said: “Marrying our Effective Attention innovation with dentsu’s media carbon calculator data marks an important next step in our journey to help brands meet their sustainability and carbon targets through sustainable routes to media activation. 

“Expending energy on something that won’t be seen is an obvious waste, but we’ve gone a step further than simply calculating the carbon cost of attention to understand the carbon contribution associated with the actual effect of that attention. This is based on our knowledge that not all attention is equal, and to maximise positive outcomes for brands and society.”

In the year since launch, Effective Attention has been an essential offering for Carat, iProspect and dentsu X, delivering for brands in a range of ways, from driving new insights, to enabling smarter investment decisions and real time optimisations. Examples include an early adoptive fashion brand building up a databank of performance, providing a valuable new lens into campaign evaluation; a mobile brand improving recall by 9% from the first to the last two weeks of their campaign through manual adjustments; and a hotel brand’s recall improved by 30% when optimising their campaign in real-time programmatically.

This new integration of carbon measurement is the latest advancement in the programme and part of Phase III of dentsu’s journey toward media decarbonisation.

As part of its strategy to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2040, Dentsu is committed to reducing the emissions associated with its media supply chain by 46% by 2030. This is something it believes can be achieved through constant innovation, challenging the status-quo, building effective partnerships, and collaborating across the industry to champion positive collective change.

To find out more about the journey dentsu has taken to accelerate media decarbonisation for the industry and for brands, please visit: dentsu.com/decarbonising-media.