The global advertising industry is sitting on an untapped opportunity to simultaneously cut costs and reduce its carbon footprint without sacrificing a single frame of creative ambition and a new industry report is making that case with hard data that the sector can no longer afford to ignore.

AdGreen, the joint industry initiative dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of advertising production, has released its fourth Annual Review, drawing on production data from 2025 to show both how far the industry has come in measuring its carbon output and how much further it needs to go. The report, published by the organisation on its official platform reveals that advertising companies using AdGreen’s Carbon Calculator measured 20,504 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent across 2,295 wrapped productions in 2025 a volume roughly equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of over 1,700 UK citizens.

While the figures represent continued year on year growth in the number of productions being measured, AdGreen is clear that this still accounts for only a fraction of total industry output globally. The gap between what is being measured and what is actually being produced remains significant, and the organisation is calling on more brands, agencies and production companies to close it.

Jo Fenn, Global Director of AdGreen, acknowledged both the progress and the challenge. “What is exciting and challenging is that this dataset shows us both progress and potential. The industry is measuring more production activity than ever before, but we know we are still only seeing a small part of the picture,” she said.

The most compelling argument in the report is not environmental but financial. AdGreen’s analysis of productions with physical shoots which contributed the vast majority of both the dataset and the measured emissions shows that simple, relatively small operational changes could have reduced 2025 emissions by 29 percent overall, equivalent to 5,828 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, without altering a single creative brief or compromising any campaign output. And critically, the changes that deliver the greatest carbon reductions also tend to deliver the greatest financial savings.

The single largest source of emissions identified in the data is people transport, specifically air travel. According to the report, reducing business class flight kilometres by just 50 percent would have cut overall production emissions by 21 percent while generating substantial savings on flights, accommodation and daily allowances for cast and crew. It is a finding that challenges the long-standing industry assumption that premium travel is a non-negotiable production cost rather than a manageable variable.

Beyond travel, the report highlights other areas where modest changes carry outsized impact. Reusing just half of newly purchased hard drives across the industry would have prevented 355 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025 alone and saved the industry close to £900,000 in hardware costs. Changes to catering as straightforward as removing beef from production menus and switching on-set generators to hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel deliver double digit percentage reductions at the activity level, most often at no additional cost to the production.

The report also recognises 80 companies identified as AdGreen’s 2025 superusers organisations that have embedded carbon measurement into their everyday production decision making rather than treating it as a compliance exercise. The list spans brands, creative agencies, production companies and in-house teams and includes Diageo, Mastercard, Channel 4, L’Oreal Groupe, VCCP, Saatchi and Saatchi, WPP Production, Omnicom Production and Publicis Production among others.

AdGreen has also introduced new features to its Carbon Calculator platform, including Early Insights, which allows teams to compare the carbon implications of different creative options before budgets are finalised, and AI usage measurement, giving production teams visibility into the emissions generated by artificial intelligence tools used in the creative process. Fenn concluded with a message that distils the report’s central argument into a single line. “This data proves that lower carbon production is often simply better production. The more projects that are measured, the clearer and more commercially compelling the picture becomes.”