Earth Day 2024: How can ad tech keep emissions down as temperatures rise?
In ad land, data is being harnessed to make environmental challenges more manageable through setting and working towards shared environmental goals. All tech firms that signed up for the Ad Net Zero initiative have now committed to net zero and near-term targets, with 88% of supporting advertisers doing the same.
But numbers alone don’t tell the full story of sustainable progress. To get a clearer picture, we asked leading ad tech experts for their views on current industry sentiment and plan for action.
Changing attitudes towards tech use
Amid growing awareness of the environmental impact of advanced tools, industry players are recognizing both the potential for harm and the importance of harnessing tech responsibly. Sarah Whitfield, CMO at Covatic commented:
“The technology industry has the power to transform the global environment with the invention and production of sustainable alternatives to everyday functions. But it also has the potential to do huge damage and deplete the Earth’s resources even further, if the companies involved aren’t committed to reducing their carbon footprint.
“In the advertising technology industry specifically, there has been a huge shift towards sustainability, largely driven by consumer expectations. While there is still a way to go, it is reassuring to see businesses taking steps to explore green alternatives – both independently and through initiatives like the B Corp Certification.
“Traditional programmatic technology and digital advertising ecosystems also use a significant amount of processing power, which in turn contributes to a greater carbon footprint. So, advertisers need to look for more planet-friendly alternatives, such as on-device technology, where data is processed locally rather than in the cloud.”
As well as making considered choices about which tools to implement, part of this change is about embracing a shift towards tech moderation rather than maximalism, as outlined by Rob Sewell, Co-Founder and CEO of SmartFrame Technologies:
“The tech industry is all about creating bigger and better solutions – but this doesn’t always take environmental impact into account. The quest for convenience has driven up energy use; digital technologies currently account for 2-4% of greenhouse gas emissions across Europe.
“Adopting a ‘less is more’ mindset is a crucial next step for all businesses choosing a tech solution. This is particularly true for the media and advertising ecosystem where simple considerations, including reducing unnecessary data storage and transfers, adopting sustainable cloud infrastructures, and prioritizing quality over quantity in ad delivery, can have a considerable impact on overall emissions.”
Powering insight-led efficiency
Data, of course, has an integral role to play in driving greater decarbonization. For Ava Moran, SVP, Azerion, achieving accurate understanding of emissions is essential to inform effective and efficient reductions:
“As an industry, it’s crucial to consider the different sources of CO2 emissions within our digital marketing efforts. Only then can we strategize ways to cut down and offset our carbon footprint.
“Businesses integrating CO2 measurement solutions throughout the entire campaign operation will be leading the way in this endeavor. These solutions can examine various campaign parameters such as duration, format, target market, and creative weight to estimate CO2 emissions. They also offer optimization recommendations for future campaigns by cross-referencing this data with performance analyses.
“In addition, businesses can generate excess emissions by going through multiple partners in a tech stack, creating a lengthy chain of dependencies that reduces their efficiency. Those working with a full-stack partner can avoid this, delivering significant improvements in sustainability and productivity.”
Equally, refined insight is just as crucial to steer the adoption of emerging tools and ensure they don’t exacerbate sustainability issues, including artificial intelligence (AI). Alex Collmer, CEO at Vidmob, commented:
“By Earth Day 2025, we need to reach a better balance amidst this content abundance. Alongside harnessing the flexibility intelligent technology brings, industry players must refine the focus of their testing efforts with creative data and write more informed prompts. This will help curb unnecessary ad iterations and reduce waste by ensuring resources are allocated to those assets that are most likely to perform.”
“As Gen AI holds the industry hot seat, more advertisers are considering its impact on sustainability, as well as efficiency. Major brands have spent the past year leveraging smart tools to enable on-the-fly development — building and testing dozens of ad iterations to determine which creative direction works best. But while the production cost of uninformed hyper-scale experimentation is low, it’s evident that the wastage on ineffective advertising and energy consumption is coming at a high environmental price.”
Climate change is a monumental problem and industry approaches to tackling it are proving characteristically strategic. Mapping out the biggest carbon culprits and identifying small adaptations for minimizing their impact is perhaps the smartest way to ensure steady improvement, with data guiding and measuring each step.
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