Digital eco-marketing initiatives devoted to saving the planet – or at least talking about it in ads – has been picking up, ClickZ reports.

John Rooks, president of Dwell Creative, an integrated agency that builds campaigns around social awareness and sustainability issues, believes that the appeal of online media to Dwell’s clients and its campaign planners is issue-based segmentation. He likes Web advertising for its ability to establish a dialog rather than simply broadcast a message, and he believes it’s that potential for consumer engagement that’s driving a wave of recent consolidation in green market media.

That consolidation includes Discovery’s purchase of TreeHugger.com, and Gaiam.com’s acquisition of eco-lifestyles media firm Lime Media and Zaadz. And large online publishers like Yahoo and Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive have lately introduced dedicated green operations.

Jakob Daschek, a founder and creative director of Syrup, the creative and production agency that worked with GE agency-of-record BBDO on Ecomagination, believes the U.S. market has become considerably more sophisticated about environmental issues since the campaign began 18 months ago.

“With the first launch of Ecomagination, we had this whole thing educating people about what the issues are,” he said. “Now we’re migrating it out into specifically what GE is doing, because people know at this point [about the issues], and they can benefit from knowing exactly what GE is doing.”