The advertising industry has a bit of a dirty secret, and it has nothing to do with how we film food for TV commercials, or if something REALLY “tastes great” or is “less filling”. Most paid media campaigns rely on programmatic advertising to serve the right message, to the right person, at the right time. But the computer power needed to execute programmatic buys consumes energy—and comes with an unseen environmental cost.
Programmatic has been a game-changer for our industry, expanding the universe we can play in and extending brands’ reach farther than previously thought possible. It lets advertisers target specific audiences more effectively than traditional methods, buying inventory on demand from thousands of available publisher properties that fit a client’s target demographic, through a variety of tactics.
Powered by a wealth of first and third party data, programmatic hyper-targets audiences, optimizes campaigns, and provides a big advantage in speed and efficiency (from an ROI standpoint). Programmatic buys use real-time bidding to purchase placements that are served to consumers in milliseconds. Then, advertisers track and report on each ad impression in real time and make necessary optimizations on targeting and messaging to ensure they’re maximizing ad spend. The results are breathtaking.
Unfortunately, the cost can be as well. One of the major drawbacks is the incredible amount of computing power and energy it takes to make the programmatic ecosystem run. Real-time bidding relies on constant communication between servers. The review and application of user information needed to make a targeted advertising “personalization engine” of programmatic display requires a heavy load of data centers to process and store all this information.
And herein lies the problem: many of these data centers run on non-renewable energy sources, which leads to increased carbon emissions. Thankfully, a new metric is emerging to help environmentally conscious firms make thoughtful decisions as they seek to balance the advantages of programmatic advertising and the environmental impact.
Scope3 is one of a series of emerging marketing analytics companies helping brands measure digital waste with the goal of reducing carbon emissions from advertising. According to the company's Q1 2023 State of Sustainable Advertising Report, programmatic advertising generates 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions each month across five major global economies (USA, the UK, Australia, Germany & France). This is the equivalent on more than 24 million gallons of gasoline being consumed.
The good news is that big companies influencing energy-hungry shifts in technology are starting to recognize the problem and take action to combat the effects of climate change. Apple Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc are making strong commitments to increased renewable energy sources, and the hope is that other tech companies will follow suit.
As part of its ongoing industry research, firms such as Scope3 identify high-carbon, climate-risk inventory by tracking and reporting on publisher emissions. Programmatic partners are now able to layer-on more sustainable inventory as part of the media buy. However, this practice is still relatively new and as a result the climate safe inventory is limited, as is the ability to target. It’s often not possible to run solely on climate conscious platforms without negatively impacting the scale of the campaign.
This is why it’s important to work with a media partner who is constantly monitoring changes in the media ecosystem, and understands the potential trade-offs and how best to optimize the campaign to ensure performance does not suffer. We’re in the early stages of this emerging trend, but it’s very promising to see the advertising industry taking action to reduce its carbon footprint.
Now, we are ready to measure to environmental impact. Now, advertisers are ready to help clients make environmentally thoughtful and well balanced advertising decisions.
It starts by adding a metric to your ad spend analysis. It starts by asking, “What is the environmental impact of our campaign?”