Nearly three decades ago, a new wave of advertising took shape as brands began reimagining how they communicated their commitments to corporate responsibility and sustainability. Advertisers launched campaigns focused on carbon capture, biofuels, and climate impact, reflecting the environmental priorities of the time. While not the start of green advertising, this era marked a noticeable shift in how organizations connected with audiences on environmental issues—an approach that has continued to evolve in both sophistication and scope.
To better understand how green advertising developed over time, researchers at the University of Oxford took on an ambitious challenge: to build one of the most comprehensive databases of environmental ads, capturing the full spectrum of messages, mediums, and creative strategies from across sectors.
The result was the Oxford Carbon and Climate Advertising Library—a first-of-its-kind academic resource powered by MediaRadar’s Creative Intelligence and fueled by data from the MediaRadar Data Cloud.
Reimagining Creative Intelligence for Research and Innovation
At its core, Creative Intelligence is about understanding how brands identify and communicate—how Sight, Sound, and Motion evolve to shape perception. When employed through MediaRadar’s Data Cloud, Creative Intelligence becomes a plug-and-play advertising resource that opens the door to innovation and deeper market understanding.
For Oxford’s research team, the goal was to expand their early-stage work with scalable, structured data. Before MediaRadar, the researchers collected advertisements they encountered through scattered sources.
With MediaRadar, they gained access to a unified creative portfolio that enabled them to:
- Decode the intent and messaging behind sustainability-themed campaigns.
- Identify patterns in creative evolution across industries including energy, aviation, and agriculture.
- Surface insights tied to tone, aesthetic, and emotional appeal in climate-related messaging.
Oxford’s project was about documenting a communications era—understanding how corporations and organizations around the world discussed environmental topics through advertising.
“MediaRadar’s data gave us visibility we never had before—suddenly, we could see two decades of environmental advertising history in one connected view.” - Dr. Benjamin Franta, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford.
A Creative Record of 2,400 Environmental Ads and Counting
Through the MediaRadar Data Cloud, the Oxford team gained access to one of the largest and most diverse ad creative portfolios available—covering thousands of brands and millions of ads, both current and historic. Using this foundation, they built a collection of more than 2,400 environmental ads spanning from 2006 to today.
The team analyzed how creative messages have changed over time, examining:
- When climate-related messaging intensified or evolved.
- How companies shifted from awareness to innovation-focused narratives.
- Which campaigns were designed for specific audiences or regions.
As a result, Oxford’s faculty and students now have unprecedented visibility into how environmental storytelling has developed across industries—supporting education, research, and collaboration worldwide.
Taking Action with Proactive Insights
Creative Intelligence doesn’t stop at collecting ads—it transforms data into meaning.
Oxford’s team—comprising faculty, students, and research consultants—used MediaRadar’s tools to move from search to suggestion, curating and tagging content in ways that surface new insights. The team enriched each creative with contextual data—when it aired, what images were displayed, and what message it conveyed.
This process allowed the team to quantify creative trends and visualize storytelling shifts over time. Their findings have already become a foundation for academic publications and classroom learning—informing university courses, research papers, and future studies.
A Single Source of Truth: AI-Ready and Interoperable
The MediaRadar Data Cloud unites brand identity, cross-platform spend, and creative messaging into a single source of truth—seamlessly connecting structured, AI-ready data across environments with interoperability.
For Oxford’s team, that meant access to clean, organized creative data they could analyze, tag, and model directly within their research frameworks—just as MediaRadar clients use the Data Cloud to activate marketing intelligence across their analytics and AI systems.
The Oxford Carbon and Climate Advertising Library demonstrates how interoperability and Creative Intelligence can drive innovation across sectors. By connecting creative data to larger conversations around sustainability, communication, and responsible storytelling, the project illustrates how transparent, accessible data can fuel discovery—from energy and manufacturing to academia and policy research.
