Hidden energy toll
While digital advertising is often perceived as a more sustainable alternative to traditional media, its hidden energy toll is often overlooked.
Imagine the carbon footprint of driving your car for nearly 4 km or charging your phone 90 times. Now, that’s just the global weighted average emissions for serving 1,000 ads. Sounds surprising? At mediasmart, we serve that many impressions in just 4 seconds! Multiply that by billions of impressions happening every day. Multiply that by 670g CO2PM (the emissions for every 1000 ads, as defined by Scope3), and the environmental impact starts to add up fast. These emissions might seem small individually, but at the scale programmatic advertising operates, it’s massive.
As more devices are connected to the Internet and advertising is available on them, the environmental impact will become a critical focal point. Additionally, the climate impact of ad fraud is significant. According to Scope3, 58.8 grams of CO2 emissions are wasted on fraud for every 1,000 impressions in the US.
The energy consumed in data transfer, storage, and ad delivery is considerable, underscoring the urgent need for the adoption of sustainable practices. Adopting solutions like green energy-powered data centers, smarter bidding filters, and optimized creatives can drastically reduce this impact.
Keep reading to learn more about mediasmart's efforts: