WTAF is responsible marketing?

By Fern Potter , SVP Strategy and Partnerships, Multilocal

In the context of growing consent challenges, fast-moving AI capabilities and ever more urgent environmental concerns, it is no surprise that responsible marketing has come to the fore. But what does it actually mean and why is it important??

While the concept of responsible marketing might vary from brand to brand and channel to channel, there are some irrefutable central themes. Forbes defines it as “purposeful and ethical marketing; a focus on fostering diversity, equality, inclusion… social responsibility and environmental sustainability; an aspiration for gender equality in all marketing and advertising; a more transparent and safe supply chain”.

I recently discussed this topic alongside industry stalwarts from Onetag, SeenThis and RMA, who also make it their mission to drive greater responsibility within advertising.??

Here are my key takeaways on what it looks like in practice, and how to measure against these objectives.?

Realising responsible marketing

Although we can agree on the importance of responsible marketing, in reality, it manifests differently from company to company. For instance, advertisers with a critical eye on ethical elements of their campaigns may wish to access diverse and accessible inventory without compromising performance metrics. Other companies may be motivated by a desire to use more efficient technology to reduce overall wastage in impressions and ad spend.?

And of course we all need to be more conscious of the need to put forward media that is fully consented, as we move away from a reliance on probabilistic profiling.

At Multilocal, our curation offering has been designed and developed with responsibility front and centre. For example, with our CarbonSmart solution, we remove wastage at the bid request stage in the PMP, so having that as a core part of the optimisation process shows we’ve moved beyond having the conversation and are putting our words into action.?

What’s more, our approach to audience curation in place of mass targeting also supports greater accessibility through the open web, where diversity thrives, giving buyers an incentive to reduce their reliance on walled gardens or ostensibly ‘premium’ publishers. By using smart technology, we can curate more representative and diverse audiences for specific campaigns

Following a framework for success

Brands are driven by an extensive list of priorities, so the challenge lies in making sure that one of those priorities is always a commitment to driving campaigns that are responsible as well as successful. Of course, offering a turnkey solution and established KPIs is the ultimate goal across the industry, although in reality we still have some work to do in terms of implementation. In short, we are lacking the alignment of interest across all industry players to make it happen at the speed at which it needs to.

Unless made mandatory, and supported by a robust framework such as GARM’s ten-step action guide, responsible marketing will need to be strongly incentivised across the industry.?

Fundamentally, the main incentive for advertisers and brands should be that it is more commercially viable to execute sustainable marketing in the long term. Now we need to focus on continuing that education piece - following the notion that ‘it is responsible to be responsible’ - as well as showing companies how to put sustainable practices into place.

Standardisation - the final hurdle?

Without industry-level guidelines and metrics, quantifying DEI initiatives and carbon emissions is challenging. GARM’s partnership with Ad Net Zero is a step forward, but adoption is voluntary. Education on applying these guidelines is essential.

We must all contribute - publishers, buyers, tech partners, and advisory bodies - to make marketing more responsible.