EMERGING STRONGER: BUILDING BRANDS IN A TRANSFORMED WORLD TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 BUILDING STRONG BRANDS (AND SELLING TOOTHPASTE) IN AN E-COMMERCE WORLD 4 How Brands Drive Digital Purchases 6 Branding Mindset, Shopper Tactics 7 Retail Sites As Publishers 8 THE STREAMING REVOLUTION FORCES HARD CHOICES ON ADVERTISERS 9 Meaningful Engagements In A Streaming World 11 Premium TV Versus Everything Else 13 A Time For Centralized Relationships 15 A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBLE INVESTING FOR THE MEDIA INDUSTRY 16 Investing In More Than Advertising 18 The Power Of Responsible Investing 20 How GroupM Is Helping Clients Invest Responsibly 22 CONTRIBUTORS 25 2 FOR BRANDS, AN OPPORTUNITY TO SHAPE THE POST-PANDEMIC ERA By Christian Juhl, GroupM Global CEO When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, it will include dozens of stories of era-defining transformation. Not only in our policies and attitudes toward health, but how we shop, how we consume entertainment and what we expect from brands, media and government in times of upheaval. Over the past year, we’ve all been forced to drastically reimagine our approach to everyday life, and it will be years before the significance of those changes are fully understood. In this publication, we confront the challenges of a strange, exciting new era. As we glimpse what life will look like beyond the pandemic, answers to some big questions are coming into focus. How are global marketers to deal with the mass migration to streaming, a market dominated by ad-free platforms run by a handful of U.S.-based giants? Where should brands spend their marketing dollars when even groceries are purchased digitally? To what degree will consumers return to pre-pandemic viewing and shopping habits? Most important, how can any brand establish trust and credibility when consumers around the world are more likely to believe a viral post on social media than a report in their local newspaper—assuming they are lucky enough to have a local newspaper? Is there anything brands can do to not just navigate this ecosystem, but restore it to some semblance of sanity? There are no simple answers at this stage, but there are solutions for data privacy, responsible investment and brand building that can help us emerge from this stronger and better positioned to lead. As you’ll see in these pages, GroupM and our agencies have some of the world’s brightest strategists, media buyers, thinkers and data scientists working to future-proof our clients’ businesses and invest their budgets toward ambitious, sustainable goals. Let their insights, coupled with GroupM’s global scale and influence, be your guide to shaping your post-pandemic world. As always, this publication is intended as the start of a conversation. It’s my hope that you will see something here that inspires you to probe further and ask some tough questions. Together, we can meet the challenges of this new era smarter, stronger and bolder. 3 BUILDING STRONG BRANDS (AND SELLING TOOTHPASTE) IN AN E-COMMERCE WORLD In some ways, e-commerce has been around for as long as people have used telephones to order products from catalogs. But in 2020, as pandemic lockdowns around the globe kept stores closed and people confined to their homes, e-commerce entered a new, dominant phase of its evolution. For example, we estimate that in 2020, the world’s largest CPG manufacturers grew their e-commerce revenues by 57% year-over-year. We project that global e-commerce sales will grow 20% during 2021, to $5.2 trillion, and then 19% in 2022, to $6.2 trillion, before leveling off somewhat in 2023 and 2024 at 16% and 15% growth, respectively. In 2021, China will once again lead the world in e-commerce as a percent of retail sales (27.5%) followed by the U.K. (23.2%), the U.S. (16.1%) and Germany (14%). How long these pandemic-induced shopping trends will persist is still a matter of conjecture, but early signs suggest that consumers who have adjusted to conducting business online are unlikely to return to old habits. 4 Because the conventional wisdom has long held that e-commerce purchases are driven primarily by more immediate, bottom-ofthe-funnel appeals, marketers may be tempted to shift their focus and their budgets toward such efforts and away from brand-building campaigns. This would be a mistake. While shopper marketing and other performance media do play an important role in driving digital purchases, new research suggests that strong brands are of even greater value in a world that is more dependent on e-commerce. That said, to build strong brands in an e-commerce world, marketers might want to rethink the assumption that branding and shopper marketing are distinct, incompatible disciplines. E-Commerce ($ in Bn) 9000 8000 7000 20% 20% 18% 20% 20% 19% 6000 16% 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 E-Commerce Retail Sales Growth Source: GroupM 15% 2024 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% 5 To investigate how consumers make buying decisions online, Wavemaker built Momentum, a purchase-journey database with over one million respondents. “What we’ve found is that the importance of brand equity is even more critical for online buyers than offline, because they are generally coming into the e-commerce journey with a strong bias toward a small set of brands,” says Wavemaker Global Head of E-Commerce Mudit Jaju. One who mknEeoa-wsCuwroehmaotf mbbrraaennrddctinhefely(u’$erencigenoiinsbgthnteo)nbuumy bbeefroorfecmonaksuinmgetrhseir 9000 purchase; that number rises from 59% for offline co2n5.0s%umers to 8000 62% for online, according to the Momentum data. E-commerce 7000 2c0o%nsum20e%rs they have a as1rt8er%oanlsgob210i4a%stifmor2e0is%t,mthoer19er%eliskeealrycthoschoonwssid. er20a.0b%rand if 6000 16% 15% 15.0% 5000 “E-commerce shrinks the active stage of the HOW BRANDS 4000 3000 DRIVE DI2G000 ITAL PURCH100A00 SES 2017 2018 purchase journey to seconds,” says Jaju. For example, when consumers make digita10l.0p%urchases that don’t require browsing—think voice-activated or search-driven purchases—they are m5.0o%re likely to buy top-of-mind products, and strong brands are more likely to be top-of-mind. The0.s0a%me is true 2f0o19r an2y02c0ons2u0m21er w20h2o2 ru2n0s23out2o0f2,4say, toothpaste or vegetabEle-Cooiml mwehroceisRectoaiml SafolerstableGbruowytihng everyday items online and doesn’t have to settle for what’s in stock at the grocery store. 2021 E-Commerce as % of Retail Sales Australia Canada Germany Japan U.K. U.S. China 8.5% 8.2% 8.0% 14.0% 16.1% 23.2% 27.5% 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% Source: GroupM 6 Building brands online in 2021 comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. It’s worth remembering that the conventional wisdom about brand-building being an offline pursuit dates back to the days of banner ads and pop-ups. Today, the blurred lines between social media and e-commerce, coupled with the rise of livestreaming (or live commerce), allows marketers to build their brands while simultaneously making point-of-sale appeals. “Consumers want the online retail experience to be entertaining,” says Josh Gallagher, Global Head of Commerce Consulting at MediaCom. “For brands, a marketplace strategy that harnesses brand stories to spark preference and purchasing is now critical. This requires altering the view that companies have viewed digital marketplaces in largely transactional terms—as channels to sell products, not to deliver brand experiences.” BRANDING MINDSET, One example Gallagher offers is live commerce concepts that tie celebrity-driven entertainment with online sales activities to build brands while people transact. “In China, live commerce is SHOPPER TACTICS celebrity-driven entertainment, not just a digital version of home shopping,” he says. “Consumers tune into livestreams because they’ll learn much more about the brand and product than simple descriptions, pictures and even videos.” Consumers can ask questions and chat with other shoppers while interacting with famous live streamers—and getting a great deal. “Brands have spent years and billions of dollars telling stories to create meaningful connections with consumers that drive sales and loyalty,” says Gallagher. “Now is the time to embrace new formats in the pursuit of e-commerce sales concurrent with brand building.” 7 And just as the revolutionary combination of printed catalog and telephone blurred the lines between media, commerce and technology, the current e-commerce boom is further blurring the lines between retail and publishing. Flush with traffic and consumer data, more and more retail sites are opening new revenue streams by monetizing those assets through ad sales. “All retailers today recognize the opportunity to leverage their traffic and first-person data to drive media revenue,” says Mindshare Global Operations Partner Simon Davis. “Although this trend started some time ago, the scale and sophistication of the capabilities being deployed will only intensify and grow.” This, too, offers a new opportunity to concurrently pursue brand building and sales. Mindshare found that linking paid media campaigns to a brand store destination RETAIL SITES AS PUBLISHERS delivered a 23% improvement in return-on-adspend compared to linking to a product detail page. They also found 23% brand share growth on Amazon when using brand ads versus conversiononly tactics. Years from now, we will probably look back on this era as a point in time that catalyzed meaningful change for e-commerce around the world. The products and companies that sustain the strength of their brands will likely be the ones that survive to make the longest-lasting impressions—and learn to operate in a world that doesn’t recognize the old dichotomies. “Mindshare found that linking paid media campaigns to a brand store destination delivered a 23% improvement in return-on-ad-spend compared to linking to a product detail page.” 8 THE STREAMING REVOLUTION FORCES HARD CHOICES ON ADVERTISERS In the 21st Century, the television industry has been defined largely by two macro forces working in tandem: globalization and consolidation. Today, these forces are nearing a critical point of convergence, which will put pressure on brands to make some big decisions about how to approach advertising’s long-dominant medium in the future. U.S.-based companies are now poised to establish dominance over the global TV industry, at least outside of China. Streaming services operated by Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, AT&T’s Warner Media and ViacomCBS are among the companies that have announced or been the subject of reports of annual expenditures on content amounting to billions of dollars per year. In the past, American giants were satisfied to develop and produce content that they sold to local TV networks, who themselves “owned” the relationship with local cable and satellite distributors or consumers and advertisers. Going forward, wherever it is practically and legally possible, the global giants will maintain rights to directly sell to consumers and advertisers most of what they develop or produce. 9 The combined effect of these efforts has been disruptive and will become much more so with every passing year, especially as we begin to see several of these new services committing to original local-language content at a scale that approaches or exceeds spending by local incumbents. The impact of these efforts could be even more pronounced in countries with historically lower penetration rates of pay TV. Collectively, the globally focused media companies are already spending many tens of billions of dollars on content every year and are now competing against media owners whose operations are both geographically constrained and financially limited in terms of the capital they can readily access. 10 For advertisers, the main consequence of all these massive investments in streaming services is that consumers will increasingly view content in streaming environments—a shift that has already picked up considerable steam in the past year. “The transition from linear to CTV viewing has accelerated during Covid and is the preferred path for younger consumers as they decide when, how and where to engage with premium video content,” says Matt Sweeney, Chief Investment Officer at GroupM U.S. This is a net negative for marketers, because a growing share of the content that consumers will be watching on their television sets will almost certainly remain ad-free, making the medium less useful for achieving reach and frequency—the two capabilities that have long given television its unique power. MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENTS IN A STREAMING WORLD “While options are endless for viewers, the challenges keep growing for brands,” says Marissa Jimenez, Managing Director at Finecast. “The same experience that draws consumers to view more content makes it increasingly difficult for advertisers to find their desired audiences. Success in premium video campaigns will require precision and scale.” As Sweeney points out, “In the United States, one hour of linear TV viewing contains an average of 16 minutes of advertising, and one hour of streaming TV contains an average of three minutes.” Of course, not all is lost for television as an advertising medium. There are some mitigating factors to consider as the broadly defined world of “connected TV” becomes more mainstream. For one, there are many new video services that incorporate advertising, especially those from free-to-air broadcasters. “The same experience that draws consumers to“Avlitehwomugohrethcoisnttreennt d mstaakrteesditsionmcreeatismineglaygo, dtitcfhaofaieuctfdiiusnoicledntanfltooechefreastain.hrdSdedvuescecsoracitpperiseshasedbirsistli-- iitniepsrbemeiinugmdveipdleooyed cawmilpl aoinglnysiwntiellnrseiqfyuiarned pregcirsoiown.”abnhdssschahle”.” -Marissa Jimenez, Finecast 11 Second, in countries where free-to-air broadcasting has historically dominated television and addressable concepts have been hard to scale, the wider use of streaming platforms will bring greater opportunities to apply addressable advertising concepts to television. Marketers will still be able to manage against reach and frequency as they always have, although it might be more expensive. For example, using normal approaches to buy television ad inventory, every incremental percentage point of reach is more expensive than the one that came before it. In the past, it might have been both very expensive and technically difficult to buy marginal points of reach. Addressable advertising may also make it easier to deliver ads to those audiences, although costs will likely be higher than in a world where everyone only watched conventional linear TV. This means that advertisers have some important decisions to make, if they haven’t made them already. 12 First, consider the brand owner who believes there is a distinct value to buying video commercials that run adjacent to “television”—meaning premium, professionally produced content—versus buying video commercials that run adjacent to any other video content. Whatever the effect and whatever the cost of this preference, both will trend unfavorably for marketers in the coming years. In other words, while it might remain superior to most other alternatives, advertising against premium TV content is likely to become more expensive and have less of a halo effect for the brand than it does now. At the same time, ad-supported video content is plentiful and increasingly available for marketers to buy if we consider usergenerated or semi-professional content as comparable at some price point to traditional television. And throughout the world, we see more and more factors that support that PREMIUM view. Consider the situation in many parts of APAC, where viewers are unlikely to see so-called TV VERSUS premium TV content on actual TVs. EVERYTHING “In APAC, outside of Australia and China, advertisements that run alongside professional ELSE digital video content is typically delivered to mobile devices rather than to conventional television sets,” says Nick Binns, Chief Investment Officer of GroupM APAC. There are several reasons for this: the still-small penetration of smart TV usage in these regions, the high cost of fixed broadband versus mobile broadband and the fact that many new streaming services have not created applications for television sets or are subscription-only. “Marketers need to increasingly think of all forms of OTT-delivered video, whether it runs on mobile devices or TV sets, as connected TV.” -Nick Binns, GroupM 13 For premium TV to stream on more actual TVs in these regions, “all of the streaming services need to build apps for all of the major hardware providers,” says Binns. “As well, we think they need to start offering advertising on their CTV applications rather than just limiting this to subscribers only, which required building up sales capabilities and teams.” “In the meantime, marketers need to increasingly think of all forms of OTT-delivered video, whether it runs on mobile devices or TV sets, as connected TV,” Binns says. Given such dynamics, marketers need to decide for themselves whether professional television is something truly unique for their brands and not directly substitutable with UGC. If this is the case, brand owners will need to prepare to shift their budgets to support other media or other forms of marketing. Alternately, if they believe that video is video wherever it runs, and that all of it is comparable at some price, they need to be prepared to organize the ways in which they plan and buy video on a more holistic basis. 14 Global streaming services are going to be increasingly important in television with every passing year. To anticipate the implications, consider that last year, the five largest global sellers of digital advertising—Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Bytedance and Amazon—accounted for around half of the world’s total advertising spending, whereas the top five in 2010—Google, Viacom (and CBS), News Corp., Disney and Clear Channel—accounted for just under 20%. Marketers benefit from centralized relationships and development of best practices at a global level in ways that were not conceivable 10 years ago. Something similar could occur with the streaming A TIME FOR CENTRALIZED RELATIONSHIPS services that develop their offerings with advertising as a core element and, consequently, centralized global relationships with these media owners will become even more important in the future than they are today. Of course, there are always trade-offs to global centralization, especially given that single country or regional competitors will retain much of their importance for years to come. Still, we can imagine that the globally coordinated brands will be better positioned to capitalize on the marketing and media opportunities that follow from globalization of direct-to-consumer video services than those brands that are relatively more decentralized in years to come. “With so much change occurring in the video landscape, now is the time for savvy brand marketers to assess their comfort across a spectrum of video contexts—from tentpole to premium to creator to gaming to UGC and beyond—and screens—from television to mobile to in-auto to VR,” says GroupM Global Head of Partnerships Kieley Taylor. “Developing and conducting informed test-and-learn strategies this broadcast year will pay back dividends across your future year investments.” “The five largest global sellers of digital advertising—Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Bytedance and Amazon—accounted for around half of the world’s total advertising spending, whereas the top five in 2010—Google, Viacom (and CBS), News Corp., Disney and Clear Channel—accounted for just under 20%.” 15 A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBLE INVESTING FOR THE MEDIA INDUSTRY For brands, 2021 is still a time of volatility and danger. Even as a world beyond the pandemic comes into view, the threats from an unstable media environment and a polarized citizenry continue to mount. Distrust of government and the media is widespread, social platforms facilitate the rapid spread of misinformation and consumers stand poised to hold brands accountable for their role—real or fabricated, intentional or inadvertent—in supporting any cause or viewpoint they find objectionable. The challenge for brands is no longer just avoiding conflict; it’s finding a way to address these hazards proactively. As always, the best way to avoid being caught reacting to every issue that comes along (or being subject to disinformation campaigns or the whims of Twitter trolls), is to decide what issues and values matter most to your brand and your customers, then proactively building equity around those issues so that there is no room for doubt about where you stand. Building a reserve of goodwill should prevent you from getting caught up in controversies to begin with, rather than simply needing to weather each unanticipated storm. 16 But such strategies are ultimately defensive ones. For brands to address the underlying causes of the dangers they face, they need to take responsibility for their role in sustaining them. “We have a responsibility as marketers to consider the impact of our advertising on society, not just on our brand,” says Claire Grinton, SVP, Head of Experience at Essence. Advertisers may not have built the platforms that threaten to tarnish their reputation and sow distrust against governments, but their media budgets have fueled their growth and keeps them in business. By dedicating more of their advertising dollars toward worthy alternatives and upstarts, marketers could simultaneously protect themselves from short-term risk and start to build a more healthy, functioning media. “We have a responsibility as marketers to consider the impact of our advertising on society, not just on our brand.” -Claire Grinton, Essence 17 In a recent Business Insider column, GroupM Global CEO Christian Juhl called upon marketers to stop using their investments to achieve short-term but ultimately self-defeating profits and instead spend their budgets with an eye toward restoring a healthy media ecosystem. Much like many institutional investors have embraced ESG investing—the idea that investors should not just avoid harmful assets like tobacco and firearms, but actively direct funds toward socially conscious organizations—the time has come for advertisers to give more weight to social factors when calculating the value of their investments, he said. “As advertisers, we need to change the mathematical models we use to value media,” said Juhl. “We need to evolve our valuation and measurement so they place a premium not just INVESTING IN MORE THAN on reach, viewability and effectiveness, but on social and environmental impact. We need to be willing to pay more for clicks that help boost a stable society, not just our quarterly reports.” ADVERTISING Though marketers may bristle at the notion of spending more on buys that are less “effective,” the rapid degradation of the media landscape long ago upended traditional concepts of effective media. For example, is it effective for marketers to put money toward increasing their click-through rate by .1 percent if those dollars are funding a platform that spreads toxic disinformation about their brand? How do you measure the ROI of a media buy that successfully delivers your pro-environment message only to backfire when consumers discover that the publisher has an indefensible carbon footprint? “We need to evolve our valuation and measurement so they place a premium not just on reach, viewability and effectiveness, but on socibahl asnshdhen”vironmental impact.” - Christian Juhl, GroupM 18 On the other hand, many brands would reap long-term benefits from supporting publishers that cater to more diverse audiences, even if those publishers don’t yet offer the reach or analytics of more mainstream publications. Likewise supporting outlets that go the extra mile to expunge disinformation or those that are mindful of their environmental impact. Of course, to make these kinds of decisions, marketers need tools that will make it easier to consider the ethical and moral consequences of their media buys. Though GroupM’s agencies have long offered various tools along these lines, they are now coming together to create a new framework that makes it easier for marketers to deploy them holistically. 19 GroupM is empowering this sort of media investing with the “Responsible Investment” framework. Armed with this tool, agency teams can offer clients numerous strategic planning options when investing their media dollars. The framework’s five focus areas—Brand Safety, Data Ethics, DE&I, Responsible Journalism and Sustainability—represent a road map for reducing brand risk and building a less toxic media landscape. (See sidebar for a breakdown of these focus areas.) Responsible Investment evolves valuation and THE POWER OF RESPONSIBLE measurement methods to account for social and environmental impact like a media placement’s carbon emissions, the diversity of audience makeup and a concerted emphasis on local journalism INVESTING and credible news sources. “The next era of media must work harder to create a healthier advertising ecosystem for everyone, especially the people consuming it,” says Kirk McDonald, GroupM North America CEO. “As the largest global media network, it is our responsibility to help clients assign media dollars as a force for good, and we are using our scale to bring about positive and meaningful change.” Of course, bringing about that change requires more than responsible media investments. Media strategies themselves can often reinforce stereotypes or perpetuate inequality, and awareness of such biases are critical to undoing them. “For example, when we’re optimizing in our day-to-day B2B campaigns, the industry has a tendency to optimize toward men,” says Grinton, “and in doing so, not only do we enforce the idea that men are business owners or leaders, but it also means we’re losing the opportunity to engage an audience that is growing.” “The next era of media must work harder to create a healthier advertising ecosystem for everyone, especially the people consuming it.” -Kirk McDonald, GroupM 20 “We need to ask ourselves, Are we willing to challenge a stereotype, or will we reinforce that bias?” Grinton continues. “And whose responsibility is it to make those decisions—the publisher, the advertiser, the agency or the user? We don’t necessarily have an answer around those things yet, but what we can do as an industry is set our own standard.” In the long run, brands will be better positioned with all of their stakeholders if they continue to focus on what they believe in, in terms of their operations, their communications and their investments. The more consistent a company is on those dimensions, the more that stakeholders will believe the company holds those views and the more committed they will be to the brand over time. When a brand’s values reflect a world in which we all want to live, and its investment dollars are carefully deployed to support those values, the brand, its customers and the media all benefit in the end. 21 HOW GROUPM IS HELPING CLIENTS INVEST RESPONSIBLY GroupM’s Responsible Investment framework centers on five focus areas. Taken together, these focus areas provide a comprehensive roadmap for reducing brand risk and creating a more sustainable media ecosystem. Here’s a look at each focus area and how GroupM is already making progress in each. 1 BRAND SAFETY Ads seen in a brand-safe environment are critical for brands and the people with whom they’re trying to connect. GroupM has long taken a leadership position on brand safety standards and practices. We were the first to establish our own display and video viewability standards, and in 2017, we launched GroupM Premium Supply globally, the first fully auditable, programmatic premium supply marketplace. In 2019, we served as a founding member of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an organization that identifies collaborative actions, processes and protocols for protecting consumers and brands. Managing the environment in which your ads appear is an ever-shifting challenge, which is why GroupM is constantly innovating on this front. Our ultimate goal is to protect not only your brand, but the consumers who may be unwittingly exposed to unsafe content. 2 DATA ETHICS With ethics ranking three times more important to company trust than competence, binary decisions taken on whether or not data use is compliant with regulation are no longer sustainable in our industry. GroupM’s data ethics philosophy has long been“just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” As such, we have designed a Data Ethics program focused on embedding the principles of Data Ethics in everything we do. This program includes key initiatives like our global and local Data Ethics committees and champions, our partnership with WPP to develop data and AI ethics decision tools and our Data Ethics Compass, an app that lets advertisers evaluate the ethical risk level of data driven tactics in media. As data collection in advertising continues to accelerate, and the ability to responsibly use that data becomes more crucial, we have a responsibility to protect the data of our customers, members and audiences. 22 3 DE&I 4 RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM For advertising to work better for people, brands must dedicate media dollars to supplier diversity and efforts that improve the ecosystem and drive positive cultural influence. Around the world, GroupM supports publishers that reach more diverse audiences with sustainable initiatives supporting and reaching underrepresented voices and communities. In 2020, we launched The GroupM Multicultural Marketplace, a growing list of Black and Hispanic owned or focused publishers that create, curate and distribute content specifically for these audiences. GroupM Australia helped found the SBS Broadcaster Network’s Beyond 3%, which seeks to increase investment in indigenous media platforms (which currently account for only .3% of ad spending in the country). In the U.K., we work with the Conscious Advertising Network to ensure that our media dollars go toward publications that serve diverse audiences. In 2019, GroupM became a founding member of The New Majority Ready coalition, a partnership with eight of the industry’s leading media, technology and publishing organizations that helps brands adapt their audience planning and media strategies to meet changing U.S. demographics. And in 2021, we announced a new partnership with OZY, the next-generation media company with a mission to bring “New + Next” voices to a broader audience. These examples represent just a small sliver of our DE&I efforts around the globe. Ethical and responsible media investment is the tip of the spear for our communities. In recent years, we’ve seen medium-sized and local news organizations close down at alarming rates, leaving communities underserved or unserved by reliable, localized news sources. At GroupM, we believe that investing strategically in the right vehicles and placements helps rebuild credible news and publication ecosystems, which is why we recently became the first holding company to join TripleLift’s “Help Journalism” programmatic initiative, which drives clients’ ad dollars to local news publishers in the U.S. And in 2020, in partnership with United for News, we launched the Local News Inclusion List, which offers advertisers a collection of brand-safe local outlets across 31 countries, including the U.S., U.K., South Africa and Brazil. By helping clients invest in reliable local news operations, we are helping create a more sustainable media environment for everyone. 23 5 SUSTAINABILITY Media placements have a carbon footprint, and reducing a campaign’s carbon emissions is critical to creating a more sustainable ecosystem, advertising and otherwise. GroupM’s ambition is to assess and eliminate media-related emissions as part of WPP’s Net Zero commitment to eliminating all carbon emissions from its operations on a net basis by 2025 and from its supply chain by 2030. In the lead up to 2030, we will refine the carbon calculators we have developed for major markets to create a single, validated, channel-level carbon calculation tool. We will factor carbon emissions into future investment decisions and work collaboratively with partners and vendors to develop measurement standards and resources that will ensure all advertising plans provided to our clients are carbon neutral by no later than 2030. This Net Zero commitment is aligned to the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C and will be submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative for validation. 24 SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS SIMON DAVIS, GLOBAL OPERATIONS PARTNER, MINDSHARE JOSH GALLAGHER, GLOBAL HEAD OF COMMERCE CONSULTING, MEDIACOM MUDIT JAJU, GLOBAL HEAD OF E-COMMERCE, WAVEMAKER CLAIRE GRINTON, SVP, HEAD OF EXPERIENCE, ESSENCE KIELEY TAYLOR, GLOBAL HEAD OF PARTNERSHIPS, GROUPM NICK BINNS, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, GROUPM APAC KIRK MCDONALD, CEO, GROUPM NA MATTHEW SWEENEY, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, GROUPM US MARISSA JIMENEZ, PRESIDENT, FINECAST AUTHORS CHRISTIAN JUHL GLOBAL CEO, GROUPM BRIAN WIESER GLOBAL PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, GROUPM 25 All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright owners. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the contents, but the publishers and copyright owners cannot accept liability in respect of errors or omissions. Readers will appreciate that the data is up-to-date only to the extent that its availability, compilation and printed schedules allowed and are subject to change. GroupM is the world’s leading media investment company responsible for more than $60B in annual media investment through agencies Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker, Essence and m/SIX, as well as the outcomes-driven programmatic audience company, Xaxis. GroupM’s portfolio includes Data & Technology, Investment and Services, all united in vision to shape the next era of media where advertising works better for people. By leveraging all the benefits of scale, the company innovates, differentiates and generates sustained value for our clients wherever they do business. Questions? Contact: marketing@groupm.com 26
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