Better Alignment. Lower Carbon. The Same Reach.
Wasted spend and campaign carbon, cut from the same set of decisions. Not a trade-off between them.
This was one of those projects where we deliberately took the long, hard road to running a paid social media campaign. The work has now been shortlisted for the global Campaign / Ad Net Zero Awards in the category of The Americas: Best Practice in Sustainable Media Planning. Awards will be announced November 5, 2026, in London.
Objective
Make every impression work harder, and truer to the brand.
Allagash Brewing Company competes in a crowded craft category against far larger beer budgets, so every impression had to do more. The brand also holds strong values around sustainability, outdoor adventure, and responsible drinking. Traditional brand-safety categories were too blunt.
They over-blocked content genuinely suitable for a craft brewery, and couldn’t tell a responsible-drinking celebration from excessive consumption. The goal: cut wasted spend while holding scale and performance.
carbon
CARBON WAS BUILT INTO THE BUY, NOT MEASURED AFTER IT.
AGENT ALIGNED TO: Social gatherings, outdoor adventure, craft beer culture, food & beverage, Maine’s natural beauty
Working with Scope3, we layered a climate-risk protection threshold into the campaign, blocking inventory with CO₂e in the 93rd percentile and above, alongside protections against made-for-advertising sites and invalid traffic.
We measured the campaign’s footprint at 5.36 MT CO₂e, equivalent to 55,257 pints of beer produced, giving Allagash a concrete carbon value attached to the media plan.
CHANNEL & PLACEMENT
TWO DATA LAYERS, ONE INTENTIONAL PLAN
AGENT AVOIDED: Politics, divisive content, irresponsible drinking, culturally inappropriate contexts
First, our adtech partner’s emissions data identified high-carbon inventory for exclusion. Second, a custom brand agent trained in natural language on Allagash’s guidelines, classified every Meta Feed and Reels placement as a aligned or unaligned with the brand’s suitability preferences.
Aligned content spanned social gatherings, outdoor adventure, craft beer culture, food and beverage, and Maine’s natural beauty. Campfire built the agent to better avoid politics, divisive content, and irresponsible drinking, calibrated with full transparency and control by the Campfire team to continuously fine-tune and get tighter.
Cut first. OFfset the remainder.
The plan carried a measured value of 5.36 MT CO₂e. Over 85% of Campfire’s own Scope3 emissions come from the media it places, not office operations, making media-carbon highest-leverage sustainability lever.
As a certified B Corp and 1% For The Planet member, Campfire offsets its footprint through environmental activations and tracks agency Scope3 emissions annually. The campaign fed directly into the tracked total. Reduction by design sits ahead of offsetting.
carbon value & offset
THE CARBON SAVING AND THE PERFORMANCE GAIN CAME FROM THE SAME DECISIONS.
REDUCTION WITHOUT A HIT TO REACH OR PERFORMANCE
By blocking an average of 83% of generic content, the Campfire team freed budget to reinvest in aligned inventory, a 488% (5x) increase in spend on brand-suitable media. Performance improved at the same time: average ad exposure rose 22%, from 1.69s to 2.03s, and viewability rose 13%, at full campaign scale.
Separately, measurement showed shorter video assets cut emissions 22% per impression vs longer formats. We are applying this deliberately, shifting Allagash toward shorter-form assets (where it makes sense) across future campaigns to avoid that 22% at scale.
Results summary
no false choice between suitability and scale.
Better alignment and better media quality can drive better performance and lower carbon at once. Encoding a brand in natural human language, not blunt blocklists, removes the trade-off between suitability and scale. And since most agency emissions come from placed media, carbon belongs in planning, not in reporting.
“Thoughtful alignment can improve performance while reducing waste. It is powerful to see our media reflect who we are as a brand. ”
“AI should increase intention, not volume. Agentic modeling aligned media quality with performance, proving smarter systems drive results while cutting emissions.”