The world is on fire and ad agencies have historically played a leading role in getting us here, pitching ExxonMobil as an algae farming, futuristic energy business, not ExxonMobil, an oil company that has ravaged the planet.

Fossil-fuel companies, like ExxonMobil, know they’re no longer, um, en vogue. According to a 2019 Yale survey, 57% of Americans think fossil-fuel companies are at least partly responsible for the damages caused by global warming.

• In turn, ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron spent a combined $223 million on digital and television advertising in 2019, according to Kantar estimates.
• Many of these ads include messaging around renewable energy efforts. For example, a Chevron commercial tries to give the impression that it’s “finding inspiration in nature” even though it spent only 0.2% of its annual capital expenditure budget on low-carbon energy sources, per a complaint against the corporation filed by environmental groups with the Federal Trade Commission this year.

Now, one group of activists is trying to sever the ties between the creative + communications industries and fossil-fuel companies altogether.

Cleaning up the mess they made

Clean Creatives is made up of nearly 400 creatives and 153 agencies that have each agreed to cut ties with—or at least never take on—fossil-fuel clients, like ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute. The group is funded by the nonprofit Fossil Free Media and was started in 2020 in response to a flood of advertising from fossil-fuel companies during the presidential election.

The goal: Make it a “reputational risk” to have fossil-fuel clients on your roster, Duncan Meisel, campaign director for Clean Creatives, told Marketing Brew. If oil and gas companies are going to greenwash—the practice of making a company appear environmentally conscious, despite its actions and business models—their ad agencies should also be held accountable, Meisel argued.

• “Advertising and PR campaigns by fossil-fuel interests are one of the biggest barriers to climate action,” Meisel said. “They are used to mislead the public and to mislead decision-makers into avoiding the necessary action we need to take to stop climate change.”

Clean Creatives hasn’t been successful yet, as major holding companies, including WPP, Dentsu, Omnicom, and Interpublic Group, haven’t signed on. Meanwhile, WPP—which works with several oil companies, according to Clean Creatives—has promised to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its supply chain by 2030. WPP declined to comment to Marketing Brew about its fossil-fuel clients or Clean Creatives pledge.

Click here to find out some of the other agencies working with fossil-fuel companies, and how clients can play a role in stopping them.—RB

Lindsey Lee Lugrin is shameless about being an influencer. Case in point: In December 2020, she founded a company that she has described as “Glassdoor for influencers,” naming it F*** You Pay Me (FYPM).

• The platform lets influencers anonymously spill the deets about their brand deals, like how much they were paid and what was asked of them.
• “At the end of the day, this is about helping people evaluate the opportunity cost of partnering with different brands. Our business is just helping people make better decisions about brand partnerships,” Lugrin told Marketing Brew.

How it works: Right now, FYPM is a “pretty basic review site,” according to Lugrin. Creators sign up for free, then Lugrin and her cofounder, Isha Mehra, manually verify their accounts.

The only rule? Influencers who join FYPM must make a contribution to the community by reviewing a brand they’ve worked with. Currently, Lugrin told us, there are 3,368 reviews up on the site. Oh, and no brands (or non-influencers) allowed.

• Lugrin said she has approved 2,700 creator accounts thus far, denying roughly 5,000.
• People are denied if they’re not an influencer or someone who manages influencers, they haven’t left a review, or their identity cannot be verified.

TL;DR: Overall, FYPM promises to give creators a clearer picture of how brands strike influencer marketing deals, in turn giving them more leverage for future collabs—or at least a little transparency. But will it actually spur brands to change their practices?

Why it matters: Industry experts agree the sector does need to shine more light on how brands treat and compensate creators. But FYPM’s sole reliance on reviews means users might not get the full picture of brands’ influencer-marketing practices.

Read the full story—including what brands think of FYPM—here.—PB

Google is giving all advertisers access to an AI-driven tool that helps them see what led someone to buy something.

Huh? Announced last week, Google is replacing last-click attribution as the default setting for advertisers measuring campaigns across search, shopping, display, and YouTube ads with data-driven attribution, which uses machine learning to give credit to all of the ads that led someone to make a purchase, not just the final one.

No limit: Previously, data-driven attribution was limited to advertisers that had hit a certain threshold on Google Ads: at least 3,000 ad interactions and 300 conversions within 30 days, according to Google spokesperson Jackie Berté.

If an advertiser doesn’t want to rely on DDA (that’s just easier now, isn’t it?), they can turn it off and rely instead on five other attribution methods, including last-click.

Ye old click: Last-click attribution is a “very simplistic” way of measuring advertisements, Ana Milicevic, digital marketing consultant and cofounder of Sparrow Advisors, told Marketing Brew. With last-click attribution, the last ad a user clicked on gets full credit for the purchase they ultimately make. But, that’s not really how most people shop or even use the internet.

• A user might search for Nike sneakers three times before making a purchase, browsing reviews and seeing ads in between, so the credit can’t solely go to one advertisement.

“A lot of the marketing efforts that were actually moving the needle would get severely undercounted in a last-click attribution scenario,” said Milicevic. With more information, a marketer can optimize media spend for whatever’s really driving a purchase, whether it be that last display ad or a promoted search one.

But, but, but: In a digital marketing environment full of walled gardens like Google, DDA is another black box that should be looked at with “skepticism,” Wayne Blodwell, founder and CEO of digital marketing consulting firm The Programmatic Advisory, told us.

“The smart brands will look at their bottom-line numbers and data-driven attribution numbers to see if they correlate. They’ll use Google numbers as a proxy, rather than the source of truth,” he said.—RB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

LinkedIn: You might need to take a slightly different approach with your social ads on LinkedIn vs. other platforms. Check out these 10 examples of effective LinkedIn ads.

Traffic: For marketers, one of the most concerning things about the ongoing Ozy saga is the exaggerated traffic. Here’s how marketers can avoid being duped by publishers faking views.

Nice to e-meet you: Networking by email in this industry can get pretty cringy. Read this post about how a 17-year-old caught the attention of a marketer.

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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Agencies are figuring out how to guide brands through the world of NFTs
• How social media managers felt about that Facebook “snow day”
• The Facebook whistleblower accused the company of overcharging advertisers

There are a lot of questionably named companies in the murky marketing universe. Two of these are real ad tech companies. The rest, you would find in the deodorant aisle. Can you distinguish them? Keep scrolling for the answers.

• Dark Temptation
• Vivial
• Krakengard
• Firefly
• Motionsense

Dark Temptation → Axe

Krakengard → Old Spice

Motionsense → Degree

The others are ad tech companies, and they smell like clicks.