How to be sustainable in Ad Tech

Sustainable by design: How AdTech vendors can contribute to decarbonization

For all the good that it does in empowering innovation and fueling the free Internet, digital advertising has a problem — it’s wasteful by design. There’s been a lot of talk about poor resource allocation, traceability and attribution challenges, yet a more impactful concern has been overlooked — how far from being truly sustainable advertising operations are.

A rough estimate is that one ad impression generates one gram of CO2. At large scale, the numbers are alarming: According to the data provided by Scope3 and Sprout Social, digital advertising yields 13,860 metric tons of carbon each year.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, it’s equivalent to over 15 million pounds of coal burned, over 34 million miles driven in a gasoline-powered vehicle, and the energy needed to sustain 1,746 homes all year long.

The industry is getting its wake-up call, but, while more publishers, brands, agencies, and AdTech providers acknowledge the problem, their solutions are fuzzy. Given its catastrophic scale, eliminating the environmental impact of advertising needs to be a team sport, with all players united for the greater good.

In particular, we believe that AdTech vendors have the potential to move the needle on the issue by supporting the industry with sustainability-focused solutions. That’s why we decided to delve deeper into the benefits of optimizing AdTech platforms for sustainability and practical examples of tech solutions combining sustainability and value.

Here’s a quick recap of what we will touch on:

• The business case for sustainability in AdTech

• Ways for AdTech vendors to optimize each step of the supply chain for sustainability

• Examples of vendors who successfully rolled out sustainability-facing features

• Key sustainability initiatives.

The full article can be found on Xenoss (Ad Tech software development house) blog here.