What you need to know:

• Scope3, the adtech firm measuring emissions generated by digital advertising, will launch in Australia and has appointed June Cheung, former regional director at Oracle, as its first JAPAC lead. She started on Monday.
• Cheung says she will aim to speak to big advertisers like banks, telcos, supermarkets and holding companies. Big players can effect big change.
• There will always be some scepticism in the market, but converting the advertising ecosystem into a carbon neutral one will happen slowly. “We have to start eating the elephant one bite at a time,” she says.

Scope3, the advertising emissions measurement firm co-founded by former AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, has set its sights on Australia and New Zealand, naming former Oracle Advertising regional director June Cheung as its new JAPAC lead with plans for a full launch in Australia later this year.

Banks, telcos and the major supermarkets are first on the list of brands Cheung said she will prioritise about their carbon impact from advertising.

“In the Australian market, the banks and telcos are the biggest spenders. The supermarkets as well. We want to drive change, right? I want to work with the brands that are investing the most in media, who also have corporate responsibility,” she said.

“At the end of the day, success to us is: Everyone buys carbon neutral inventory, we make a better ecosystem.”

Her new role is familiar for Cheung in its mission and strategy. She entered the Oracle business after it acquired Grapeshot, an early contextual and brand safety company, in 2018. She was advocating contextual advertising years before Google announced its shifting plans for deprecation of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.

“Context was relatively new… It was educating, evangelising the market, and then also driving revenue,” she said. Carbon offsetting is the same: It’s relatively new, and her role will be about educating, evangelising, and driving revenue.

After building a presence in the US and Europe over the past eight months, which includes a partnership with programmatic platform MiQ, Scope3 will formally launch in ANZ in October.

“There are a lot of global and local brands like the banks, the telcos, have a corporate responsibility to reduce their emissions,” she said.

“A lot of big brands invest a lot of their marketing budget in the advertising industry. If they can reduce their supply chain emissions, it’s going to make a huge difference to their company achieving ad net zero. So, working with the holdcos, working with CMOs to begin with, but I think the CEO has huge influence as well.”

Cheung likens the move to electric vehicles. Tesla started with those most likely to buy one, then has worked its way down – Scope3 plans to do the same. And in Australia, which has at least an 833 kilotonne carbon footprint in digital advertising, that’s a big ask.

Anne Coghlan is one of Scope3’s founders and its Head of Product. “Because Australia has a low reliance on renewable energy sources compared to other countries, its emissions per advertisement is above global average (of one gramme),” she said in a blog post.

“We’re committed to growing our presence in the market and investing in partnerships and strategies that move advertising emissions in the country closer to carbon neutral. June is the perfect person to lead this effort.”

Performance vs offsetting

Cheung has already encountered some scepticism about offsetting media. In an interview with Mi3 published earlier this week, new Dentsu Media CEO Danny Bass said a key conversation going forward will be whether brands prioritise performance or the need to be carbon neutral in media plans.

“I think that's the thing that will need to be decided over the coming years,” he said. “How important is the priority to focus on a more ethical and sustainable choice of media? Or will effectiveness and results always outweigh that decision?”

Cheung agreed there’s “always going to be a sceptic” but, on the whole, feedback and conversations have been overwhelmingly positive.

“I was talking to a friend who is a marketing director. He's like, ‘what about performance? The CEO, the CMO's only going to care about performance’. The beauty of Scope3 data is, yes, we're looking to reduce carbon, but we're also making efficiency in the ecosystem … I hear the word 'plan', it's like 'done' and you present it to the client and go, 'this year, this is what you're going to do'. I think we need to drive iterative change and we have to start eating the elephant one bite at a time,” she said.

“If we can get big brands or influencing brands to get on this journey to go, ‘hey, I can run a better business, get better business outcomes if I buy more green media’, then let's do that.”

She’s two days into the role, which she hopes will ultimately extend beyond advertising and into other industries.

“People are really excited to know more. People want to have coffee. People want to have a conversation and understand how advertising and the industry can play a role in climate change,” she said.
“I work in the media space. That's my skill set. I never thought in the world that I could work in an environmental, sustainable, impact role. And to do that, to be able to leverage my relationships, my skill set, and talk to partners to drive change for our industry, that's the purpose.”