How reducing your carbon footprint can save you money and increase ad impact

I started covering climate change — the increasing temperature of the planet as a result of human activities — in the 1990s. At the time the possible impacts seemed a long way off. 

“We have looked at how these things will impact us in 20 to 30 years,” said Yuri Staraselski, co-founder and chief technology officer at Crimtan. “Ten years ago, 30 years seemed to be far away. Now it’s just 20 years. So it’s getting closer and the impact is quite significant.”

The last eight years are the warmest ever recorded. July of this year was the hottest month ever recorded, according to NASA. “Overall, July 2023 was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (0.24 degrees Celsius) warmer than any other July in NASA’s record, and it was 2.1 F (1.18 C) warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980.” As a result, there are more frequent and more destructive storms, longer droughts destroying farmland and drying up rivers, and eventually parts of the planet becoming too hot for people to live in. 

What does this have to do with digital marketing? Quite a bit. 

“Recently there has been a lot of research on the impact of digital advertising on the climate and it turns out visual advertising has quite a significant impact on CO2 emissions,” said Staraselski. “Research shows that around 4% of all emissions can be attributable to digital advertising campaigns. So it’s not something that can be kind of neglected or not looked at.”

It’s estimated that one digital ad campaign delivering 1 million impressions has the same carbon footprint as a round-trip flight from Boston to London.

Crimtan, based in London, is a programmatic display lifecycle marketing agency. As its CTO, Staraselski sees all the different parts of the digital marketing world. Understandably, he’s been thinking about how digital marketing can lessen its carbon footprint. During our interview, he pointed to some good news: The steps that will reduce digital’s carbon emissions, will also save companies money and make marketing more efficient.

(Interview edited for length and clarity.)

Q: There seems to be more awareness and desire to do something now than previously. What changed?

A: We got into the mindset of getting things done and delivered. During the last 20 years, with the explosion of internet advertising and various new channels, unfortunately, I don’t think there was a lot of attention to the cost of this.

We’re starting to see more and more concern coming from clients and brands. There is pressure on them as well to start actually taking action rather than discussing things. So they quite rightly are asking partners like ourselves about the steps we are taking and about the things that they can do to become more efficient.

During the last 12 months, we have seen a shift and we are seeing more and more questions about sustainability and the impact on CO2 emissions.

Q: What has that done?

A: With more and more focus on sustainability, people started looking at what’s the impact and how much it costs to deliver an ad campaign. 

When you think about delivering an ad campaign, you need to start from the basics: How much does it cost to transmit a picture or an ad? Most of the ads on the internet are either banners which are simple images or they are some kind of video or audio files.

The cost of transmitting those files is quite high because internet advertising can go out to pretty much anyone. The most engaging ads, which are considered to be video ads, are the worst offenders in terms of the CO2 impact because of their size. Delivering a pre-roll video ad generates about 50 times more CO2 compared to a standard banner ad. 

So here is the conundrum. On one side, we want the advertising to be more engaging. On the other side, the environmental price is quite heavy compared to delivering less engaging images. 

We all, as an industry, need to find some balance.

Q: How do we find that?

A: The reduction of CO2 footprint correlates with efficiency in delivering advertising. So we start by thinking about where the inefficiency is. It is well known that quite a significant part of ads are never viewed. So we are sending all these files around, but no one really looks at them.

Dig deeper: “Bad” digital ad spending can harm the environment

If we start thinking about optimizing towards metrics like attention time and viewability this means that there is a lot less wastage. Less wastage means that there is more impact for the clients in that more people see and pay attention to their ads and more chances they will do something afterward like recognize a brand or buy something. And these are the things that they can measure.

Q: Is there anything else?

A: Look at all the heavy file delivery and reduce the size of the files. There has been research showing we can reduce the quality of the video without impacting brand awareness. Between 20% to 30% of the emissions can be cut by slightly compromising on the quality of the file.

There are companies who have gone a bit further than that and also looked at how these files are transmitted and delivered. People have developed technologies that instead of delivering the whole file right away, deliver it in pieces and react to whether the video is being viewed or not. And this allows us to further save quite a lot. 

There is quite a lot that can be saved by targeting the way the devices are getting the images. For example, Wi-Fi, as a method of delivery, produces a lot less CO2 compared to smartphones. The reason is that in order for the phone to transmit files through cellphone networks, the phone needs to be constantly searching for cell towers and it’s consuming a lot more energy and as a result, producing a lot more CO2.

Q: What will drive businesses to make changes like these?

A: Companies like ourselves notice the impact of energy prices on delivering advertising campaigns. Due to several factors, we have seen the prices for energy consumption significantly increase. This puts pressure on us and everyone else to think about how we can be better at consuming energy, and how we can consume less. How can we utilize other energy sources better? Higher gas and other prices are pushing businesses to think about their energy footprint and CO2 footprint. 

There is also the transition towards cloud models. Quite a big chunk of the costs in cloud usage is the utilization of the bandwidth. And this bandwidth utilization is directly connected, of course, to the constant transmission of files. So if we can optimize this or reduce this, there is a significant savings for the business as a result.

Also, the new technologies can help. Here’s an example about video: So, quite a chunk of CO2 emissions generated by video come from actual production of it. Think about all the energy needed to shoot a video — the lights for the set, the cameras, getting all the people you need in one place. 

But with the adoption of generative AI, the cost can be significantly reduced because you don’t need all those things. However, there is a question, how much did it cost to train the model and how much energy is it consuming in order to produce things? And I don’t have an answer.

Q: Will all these efforts be enough?

A: Here in the UK, it was the warmest September on record. It is concerning that to drive real change everyone needs to come to an agreement. It has been a while and still important agreements haven’t been reached. However, it’s encouraging that there are now businesses that are driving this agenda, specifically in our industry.

Companies and people are trying to pioneer the change. And even though they are doing this obviously to make money, they are creating a positive effect by bringing this to the agendas of everyone. And it’s going to happen in other industries as well. So the pressure from the business side of things will start driving more change. Whether it’s enough, it’s difficult to say.