The Limits of Green Programmatic

When you eco-design a webpage, you optimize it: it loads faster, with all the positive consequences this can have on your business. You name it: cost reduction, improved navigation, customer satisfaction. In programmatic, the principle is the same: if the files exchanged are lighter, DSPs, SSPs, and ad servers naturally consume less energy, reducing their operating costs and carbon footprint.

Among the contemplated optimizations, conscious infrastructure maintenance (servers, to simplify) by ad tech companies is a radical path to improvement. In a recent publication by MindMedia, Criteo confirmed that its 11 data centers and 45,000 servers accounted for 97% of its carbon emissions in 2021. Opting for replacing some key server components rather than completely substituting them is one area for better practices. Choosing, when possible, suppliers with the best energy mix is another. Ad tech companies like Nexx360, for example, offer server-side header bidding services (rather than client-side), which require less processing power from the user's browser and enable faster page loading.

SPO and DPO also lead to fewer requests to a reduced number of intermediaries in the programmatic chain, inadvertently reducing their carbon footprint as well. In 2022, one operation of this kind made waves in the ad tech world when The Trade Desk (TTD), a major DSP, instructed its technology partners (SSPs) to no longer send them Open Bidding inventory offers (i.e., inventory from the proprietary software by Google competing with header bidding and generating a lot of redundant auctions). Scope 3 estimated that this single decision reduced TTD's carbon footprint by the equivalent of 5,000 round-trip flights between New York and London per year.

Similarly, aside from the part of ad spend diverted by fraud, Scope 3 estimated that nearly 15% of online advertising investments actually serve to buy ad space on so-called Made for Advertising (MFA) sites, unnecessary for advertisers, resulting in traffic and CO2 emissions that could be avoided.

What happens when reducing the carbon footprint of online advertising is no longer a byproduct of programmatic optimization? Let's take the upcoming disappearance of third-party cookies as an interesting use case. They are used to track user behavior across different websites, enabling the collection of valuable data and the creation of audience profiles for specific advertising. Their role is crucial, and their disappearance poses challenges for the entire programmatic chain.

Contextual targeting is often presented as a viable alternative, meaning that instead of tracking the user, the focus is on ensuring that the content of the ad aligns closely with the editorial content of the website. Less stored and exchanged cookies equals more "eco-friendly" targeting, right? Not so fast... Google is the best-positioned company to make such a shift. The wealth of user information it has (collected from their devices and applications) could potentially allow it to bypass the absence of third-party cookies. But at what cost in terms of increased computing power? How many new requests to how many servers?

This kind of equation becomes even more complex when considering the continued growth of ad blockers – 40% of internet users in France in 2020, according to a study by We Are Social and Hootsuite. If the workaround involves a Super programmatic chain, more powerful, intuitive, and organic, in short...doing more with less and still satisfying advertisers and publishers, it would still be quite fortunate if it were also environmentally responsible.

Programmatic will be green by conviction, not opportunism. This principle applies to all advertising channels: if reducing the carbon footprint of a campaign is the intentional or unintentional consequence of its optimization, it truly serves our planet's interests only if the savings made are not reinvested in another campaign. Second place goes to the greenwashers! It does not make sense, we would be back to square one. This is no longer a race. If greening activities is now a competitive advantage ("Look, we're doing it, they're not..."), how long can it remain so in a society becoming increasingly aware of the challenges of the energy transition?

The message that advertising aims to convey must evolve to align with editorial content. Users, whose ability to detect ambiguities and contradictions is sharpening, will increasingly not tolerate environmental aberrations. Many newsrooms, like Le Figaro's, are equipping themselves with Corporate social responsibility (CSR) teams or even complete brigades of journalists specializing in environmental topics. In the case of The Guardian, they now produce thousands of articles per year across all platforms. 

And ad networks are also stepping up! The Alliance of FR regional and local press (366), for example, shows the way. In France, it was the first to obtain the Positive Company label. Its CSR strategy and actions encompass its entire value production chain. It measures the carbon footprint of its campaigns using the DK solution and now offers the optimization of certain multiplier factors to its clients. In 2022, such an approach allowed them to reduce the carbon footprint of a pre-roll video campaign (20 million impressions) by 62%.

These are all new opportunities for "green" filters for programmatic.