What's the Carbon Footprint of a Super Bowl Ad?

Super Bowl ads are where brands tend to pull out all the stops—factors like A-list celebrities, sexy locations and new product launches all combine to create what marketers hope will make their ad the star of every watch party in the country and around the globe. But all those ingredients can also create a pretty hefty carbon footprint. And as consumers, regulators, watchdogs and marketing industry talent all express increasing concern about the impact that brands are having on the climate, even over-the-top spectacles like the Big Game will need to cut back on their greenhouse gas emissions. Experts told Adweek that'll require adjustments to everything from casting to production to digital ad buys. Much of this work is already underway at an industry level, but brands have yet to begin publicizing the climate impact of their Super Bowl spots. Until they do, we did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to understand what might indicate a particularly carbon-intensive spot—and where marketers can save on emissions. Ahead of Ad Net Zero’s US Launch, Clean Creatives Challenges the Group’s Stance on Fossil Fuels Celebrities: up to 24 metric tons of CO2 emissions per A-lister. That's equivalent to roughly 60,000 miles driven by an average gas-powered vehicle. Super Bowl ads are famous for their star-studded lineups. In recent years, many brands have begun recruiting not just one, but several celebrities to make their Big Game dreams come to life. From an emissions standpoint, though, that can add up fast—especially if celebrities commute to the shoot via private jet, which generates roughly two metric tons of CO2 per hour, according to a report from Transport and Environment. If a celebrity has to fly from Los Angeles to Norway, for example, a private jet flight alone could generate up to 24 metric tons of CO2 emissions. "Like every other ad, the carbon footprint of a Super Bowl ad is directly impacted by the creative choices that go into it," Gabi Kay, co-founder of Green the Bid, told Adweek. "Shoot local, without traveling crew, talent, client and agency," she advised. "Supervise remotely, or use existing footage or animation. Go in with a reduction mindset." Digital ads: 13,860 metric tons of CO2 emissions from total Super Bowl ad-related impressions. That's the equivalent of 1.5 million gallons of gas consumed. The above calculation uses emissions estimates from Scope3 and impressions data from Sprout Social. While the pinnacle of the Super Bowl advertising season is, of course, the event itself, that's only one component of advertising's Big Game-related carbon cost. "Everyone focuses on the big 30-second spot," Ryan Cochrane, chief operating officer at Good-Loop, told Adweek. "But all of the supporting campaign that goes around that has a huge environmental footprint." For example, Good-Loop estimates that for every 1 million times that an ad is streamed online, roughly one metric ton of CO2 is emitted. Last year, the top 10 ads were streamed roughly 420 million times around the Big Game, according to Acuity Ads—generating around 420 tons of CO2 emissions. That's the equivalent of about 2,800 flights from Philadelphia to Kansas City, Cochrane noted. To limit emissions related to Super Bowl-related digital advertising, he advised brands to work closer with publisher partners, use smaller video sizes when possible and avoid made-for-advertising sites. "Removing some of your more inefficient resellers and driving more by direct to publishers—these are all things which reduce the hops and the chain and reduce the CO2 load," Cochrane explained. Luckily, those changes generally also make ad dollars go further, he added, meaning that reducing the carbon footprint of ad tech is a win-win for advertisers. Advertised emissions: about one-third of the CO2 emissions generated by an average U.K. consumer each year. For American consumers, that'd be over 5 metric tons of CO2 emissions—the equivalent of 11.6 barrels of oil burned. Beyond the footprint of producing and disseminating an ad, there's also the impact of its message, noted Alice Roche-Naude, senior sustainability strategist at agency Futerra. "[There's] additional consumption related to running those big ads," Roche-Naude told Adweek. "[That's] probably where the biggest impact will lie." Super Bowl ads in 2022 had an average return on investment of $4.60 per dollar spent, according to Kantar. Generally, that increase in sales translates to more emissions generated all along the supply chain. Advertised Emissions, a term coined by U.K.-based sustainable advertising network Purpose Disruptors, calculated the carbon cost of this increase in sales due to advertising. It estimates the U.K.'s advertised emissions at 32% of each person's carbon footprint. If that estimate were roughly the same for American consumers, the carbon cost would be over 5 tons of carbon emissions per person annually. To mitigate that negative impact of advertising, Roche-Naude pointed to campaigns that aim to sway consumer behavior toward more sustainable options like electric vehicles, or adjusting how we eat, travel and power our homes to reduce climate impact. "There's definitely a big awakening around the power of storytelling and the power of brands, and the influence that they can have on consumers' consumption patterns," she said. The TV spot itself: roughly 77.5 metric tons of CO2e generated for each 30-second ad. That's equivalent to more than 15 homes' annual electricity use. While the first thing that may come to mind when considering the carbon footprint of a Super Bowl spot may be the airing of the ad itself, that's one of the more difficult pieces of the puzzle to calculate, experts said. With more people streaming the Big Game rather than watching it on linear, that's likely increasing the impact. Estimates by Streaming Media put the carbon emissions generated by streaming video at roughly twice that of linear TV. Still, others have contested that measurement. The International Energy Agency estimates that one hour of streaming emits 36 metric grams of CO2. A 2011 study presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (the most recent data we could find) estimated that linear TV emits roughly 88 metric grams of CO2 per viewer-hour. There are a lot of factors that are difficult to track, from the end devices themselves and how efficient they are to the power grid that each device, internet router and broadcast hub is pulling energy from. But given Nielsen's estimates of 208 million viewers for Super Bowl 56, the energy used to power all the related infrastructure is far from insignificant. This article has been updated to reflect that digital ads contribute 13,860 metric tons of carbon, based on emissions estimates from Scope3 (one gram of CO2 emitted per impression) and impressions data from Sprout Social (13.86 billion total impressions). It has been updated to reflect that this is the equivalent to 1.5 million gallons of gasoline consumed.

Sustainability News

What's the Carbon Footprint of a Super Bowl Ad?

Celebrities, location and virality all factor into overall climate impact

Kathryn Lundstrom

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Kathryn Lundstrom