Publishers have some of the greatest challenges on the path to sustainability. Not only that but advertisers and brands demand clean supply. What can publishers do to meet industry expectations? In this post, we cover the 3 ways publishers can reduce their carbon emissions without impacting revenue learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit.
Publisher Panel: Less is More: How Publishers Can Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Impacting Revenue
Speaking from the supply side at the Green Media Summit, 4 representatives from publishers and partners discussed how publishers can become more sustainable while maintaining or growing revenue. Mike Racic, President at Prebid spoke alongside Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine, Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising and Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent with Ben Epstein, Head of Product at Jounce Media as the panel host. Here are some of the learnings from the publisher panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
3 Ways Publishers are Reducing Emissions Without Diminishing Revenue
1. SPO is helping publishers reduce their carbon emissions without affecting revenue
At this time, many organizations in the digital media and ads industry are quickly embracing Supply Path Optimization (SPO) to reduce emissions. But publishers are weary to do so in fear of impacting revenue. However, we learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit that unanimously, SPO is worth the effort from a revenue and carbon emissions perspective. From the publishers that had already started their SPO initiatives, they found no negative impact on revenue.
As Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising said,
“From a Q1 standpoint, we reduced our overall general carbon by about 20% and we're not seeing any kind of yield impact.”
Read More: Why The Ad Industry Should Focus On Scope 3 Emissions — Sharethrough
So how do publishers begin with SPO? Evaluating partners and resellers to determine who is contributing what to a publisher’s overall performance and yield. Looking at factors like the number of calls or where and how those are coming in is a good place to start. Even considering how partners interact with each other can make a positive impact.
Mike Racic, President at Prebid advised,
“[Check out] who is complementary to what you're getting from the bigger SSPs and don't be afraid to shut one or two down and see what happens. So if you start there, you're gonna get more efficient.”
Alternatively, working with resellers can be beneficial for publishers. If resellers bring value to publishers by enabling them to draw in unique demand or by increasing yield in other countries where publishers might have less of a sales presence. Regularly A/B testing and validating yield from SSPs and other partners and testing new connections helps publishers also benchmark other supply paths.
Additionally, working with many resellers and SSPs can actually be a detriment to publishers’ overall yield. Calls start to get duplicated between supply paths and cannibalize higher CPMs simply because the lower CPM calls were answered first.
This was echoed by Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent,
“We're taking a less is more approach with the way in which we broadcast our inventory. And we've definitely found many, many scenarios of, hey, we don't really need these handfuls of partners because they're not contributing to our overall yield game.”
So publishers need not fear SPO as was reassured by Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine,
“Evaluate your partner performance and don't be afraid to eliminate your weakest performing partner.”
2. Publishers are reevaluating their sites and tech infrastructure for sustainability gains
Next, there are many different ways that publishers can maximize their sustainability gains by taking a closer look at their tech infrastructure and sites for any inefficiencies. From design considerations to optimizing and removing dated scripts, fonts and cookies, there are many ways that publishers can approach their sites to reduce emissions. Some of the more simple changes that publishers can make are switching to servers that are more energy efficient and powered by renewable energy.
As Kenrika Mazuch shared,
“We actually deprecated auto play and the impact from that was actually really huge. We went from, I think it was about 1.5 petabytes, to about 370 terabytes. And the impact of that was we saw about a 92% in reduction in the data collection.”
Speaking of autoplay, it’s a publisher's best practice to only refresh an ad slot when it’s in view. But what if the user is idle or away? The ads would keep refreshing to no one seeing them. Publishers can implement a time-check where if a user doesn’t interact with the site in x amount of time, then that pauses the ad refresh. Saving the publisher, advertisers and users bandwidth and costs. And further reducing carbon emissions.
Additionally, improving the site and tech infrastructure not only reduces emissions, but it can also mean improved revenue for publishers. The speed at which requests are sent and received, ads displayed on the page, are among other factors that can yield better results and revenue for publishers. For example, the faster a publisher can respond to a bid, then the more likely they are to win.
This was affirmed by Scott Mulqueen saying,
“We're in the process of overhauling our entire ads infrastructure such that it is faster and more effective so that it can send the outbound requests, receive the bids and not lose bids due to slowness of action. We've seen significant results in a cleaner pipeline with more efficient and faster transactions.”
The IAB Tech Lab recently released a starter guide, The Green Playbook, for publishers and other industry players to help guide them toward a sustainable programmatic marketplace.
3. Publishers need a standard framework to meet industry expectations
Lastly, advertisers want clean, sustainable supply or they may refuse to work with high-emission publishers, but how will publishers know if they’re meeting those expectations? Without a standard framework, publishers are left guessing if they hit the mark. Because what one part of the supply chain does affects another, it’s vital that publishers, partners, advertisers and brands need to collaborate on what the standard process is and how they all fit in that process.
As Chao Liao put it,
“When it comes to an industry effort like this I think we all need to sit down on the table to say, hey, who's doing which part? And how do we affect the entire ecosystem?”
But SPO is only part of the solution. A publisher might have the cleanest, most optimized supply path, but if their sites are heavy emitters, then that stalls progress and still affects other parts of the supply chain. If SPO is the ‘amount’ and the ‘where’ data is coming from, the ‘how’ is the way these inbound and outbound requests interact with each other. And these need to be consistent across the entire programmatic supply chain.
Because part of a standard framework includes a standard metric, publishers can evaluate their performance and the performance of their partners, resellers and SSPs to show advertisers the results.
This was reinforced by Mike Racic saying,
“We are going to start putting out what we are thinking are going to be guidelines that are gonna allow publishers of different sizes to understand basic things like how many header bidders you should be working with? What to do with pixels, how many pixels you should have firing?”
However, publishers don’t have to wait for industry standards to begin measuring their sustainability initiatives. Publishers can set internal sustainability goals to encourage employees to find and implement new solutions that reduce carbon emissions and improve operational efficiency.
Publishers can be the sustainability heroes of digital media and advertising
Publishers have some of the greatest opportunities to reduce carbon emissions out of all players in the digital media and advertising ecosystem. Be it through SPO, a standard framework, or revamped site and tech infrastructures, publishers have various ways to begin reducing their carbon footprint without reducing their revenue. However, publishers still need feedback and input from the rest of the ad tech ecosystem about what they expect from publishers. In any case, collaboration is what will lead the industry to a net zero emissions path.
Subscribe to our newsletter for more Green Media Summit and sustainability updates.
Publishers have some of the greatest challenges on the path to sustainability. Not only that but advertisers and brands demand clean supply. What can publishers do to meet industry expectations? In this post, we cover the 3 ways publishers can reduce their carbon emissions without impacting revenue learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit.
Publisher Panel: Less is More: How Publishers Can Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Impacting Revenue
Speaking from the supply side at the Green Media Summit, 4 representatives from publishers and partners discussed how publishers can become more sustainable while maintaining or growing revenue. Mike Racic, President at Prebid spoke alongside Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine, Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising and Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent with Ben Epstein, Head of Product at Jounce Media as the panel host. Here are some of the learnings from the publisher panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
3 Ways Publishers are Reducing Emissions Without Diminishing Revenue
1. SPO is helping publishers reduce their carbon emissions without affecting revenue
At this time, many organizations in the digital media and ads industry are quickly embracing Supply Path Optimization (SPO) to reduce emissions. But publishers are weary to do so in fear of impacting revenue. However, we learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit that unanimously, SPO is worth the effort from a revenue and carbon emissions perspective. From the publishers that had already started their SPO initiatives, they found no negative impact on revenue.
As Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising said,
“From a Q1 standpoint, we reduced our overall general carbon by about 20% and we're not seeing any kind of yield impact.”
Read More: Why The Ad Industry Should Focus On Scope 3 Emissions — Sharethrough
So how do publishers begin with SPO? Evaluating partners and resellers to determine who is contributing what to a publisher’s overall performance and yield. Looking at factors like the number of calls or where and how those are coming in is a good place to start. Even considering how partners interact with each other can make a positive impact.
Mike Racic, President at Prebid advised,
“[Check out] who is complementary to what you're getting from the bigger SSPs and don't be afraid to shut one or two down and see what happens. So if you start there, you're gonna get more efficient.”
Alternatively, working with resellers can be beneficial for publishers. If resellers bring value to publishers by enabling them to draw in unique demand or by increasing yield in other countries where publishers might have less of a sales presence. Regularly A/B testing and validating yield from SSPs and other partners and testing new connections helps publishers also benchmark other supply paths.
Additionally, working with many resellers and SSPs can actually be a detriment to publishers’ overall yield. Calls start to get duplicated between supply paths and cannibalize higher CPMs simply because the lower CPM calls were answered first.
This was echoed by Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent,
“We're taking a less is more approach with the way in which we broadcast our inventory. And we've definitely found many, many scenarios of, hey, we don't really need these handfuls of partners because they're not contributing to our overall yield game.”
So publishers need not fear SPO as was reassured by Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine,
“Evaluate your partner performance and don't be afraid to eliminate your weakest performing partner.”
2. Publishers are reevaluating their sites and tech infrastructure for sustainability gains
Next, there are many different ways that publishers can maximize their sustainability gains by taking a closer look at their tech infrastructure and sites for any inefficiencies. From design considerations to optimizing and removing dated scripts, fonts and cookies, there are many ways that publishers can approach their sites to reduce emissions. Some of the more simple changes that publishers can make are switching to servers that are more energy efficient and powered by renewable energy.
As Kenrika Mazuch shared,
“We actually deprecated auto play and the impact from that was actually really huge. We went from, I think it was about 1.5 petabytes, to about 370 terabytes. And the impact of that was we saw about a 92% in reduction in the data collection.”
Speaking of autoplay, it’s a publisher's best practice to only refresh an ad slot when it’s in view. But what if the user is idle or away? The ads would keep refreshing to no one seeing them. Publishers can implement a time-check where if a user doesn’t interact with the site in x amount of time, then that pauses the ad refresh. Saving the publisher, advertisers and users bandwidth and costs. And further reducing carbon emissions.
Additionally, improving the site and tech infrastructure not only reduces emissions, but it can also mean improved revenue for publishers. The speed at which requests are sent and received, ads displayed on the page, are among other factors that can yield better results and revenue for publishers. For example, the faster a publisher can respond to a bid, then the more likely they are to win.
This was affirmed by Scott Mulqueen saying,
“We're in the process of overhauling our entire ads infrastructure such that it is faster and more effective so that it can send the outbound requests, receive the bids and not lose bids due to slowness of action. We've seen significant results in a cleaner pipeline with more efficient and faster transactions.”
The IAB Tech Lab recently released a starter guide, The Green Playbook, for publishers and other industry players to help guide them toward a sustainable programmatic marketplace.
3. Publishers need a standard framework to meet industry expectations
Lastly, advertisers want clean, sustainable supply or they may refuse to work with high-emission publishers, but how will publishers know if they’re meeting those expectations? Without a standard framework, publishers are left guessing if they hit the mark. Because what one part of the supply chain does affects another, it’s vital that publishers, partners, advertisers and brands need to collaborate on what the standard process is and how they all fit in that process.
As Chao Liao put it,
“When it comes to an industry effort like this I think we all need to sit down on the table to say, hey, who's doing which part? And how do we affect the entire ecosystem?”
But SPO is only part of the solution. A publisher might have the cleanest, most optimized supply path, but if their sites are heavy emitters, then that stalls progress and still affects other parts of the supply chain. If SPO is the ‘amount’ and the ‘where’ data is coming from, the ‘how’ is the way these inbound and outbound requests interact with each other. And these need to be consistent across the entire programmatic supply chain.
Because part of a standard framework includes a standard metric, publishers can evaluate their performance and the performance of their partners, resellers and SSPs to show advertisers the results.
This was reinforced by Mike Racic saying,
“We are going to start putting out what we are thinking are going to be guidelines that are gonna allow publishers of different sizes to understand basic things like how many header bidders you should be working with? What to do with pixels, how many pixels you should have firing?”
However, publishers don’t have to wait for industry standards to begin measuring their sustainability initiatives. Publishers can set internal sustainability goals to encourage employees to find and implement new solutions that reduce carbon emissions and improve operational efficiency.
Publishers can be the sustainability heroes of digital media and advertising
Publishers have some of the greatest opportunities to reduce carbon emissions out of all players in the digital media and advertising ecosystem. Be it through SPO, a standard framework, or revamped site and tech infrastructures, publishers have various ways to begin reducing their carbon footprint without reducing their revenue. However, publishers still need feedback and input from the rest of the ad tech ecosystem about what they expect from publishers. In any case, collaboration is what will lead the industry to a net zero emissions path.
Subscribe to our newsletter for more Green Media Summit and sustainability updates.
Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech is a short 3-minute podcast exploring the news in the digital advertising industry. Ad tech is a fast-growing industry with many updates happening daily. As it can be hard for most to keep up with the latest news, the Sharethrough team wanted to create an audio series compiling notable mentions each week.
Publishers have some of the greatest challenges on the path to sustainability. Not only that but advertisers and brands demand clean supply. What can publishers do to meet industry expectations? In this post, we cover the 3 ways publishers can reduce their carbon emissions without impacting revenue learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit.
Publisher Panel: Less is More: How Publishers Can Reduce Carbon Emissions Without Impacting Revenue
Speaking from the supply side at the Green Media Summit, 4 representatives from publishers and partners discussed how publishers can become more sustainable while maintaining or growing revenue. Mike Racic, President at Prebid spoke alongside Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine, Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising and Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent with Ben Epstein, Head of Product at Jounce Media as the panel host. Here are some of the learnings from the publisher panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
3 Ways Publishers are Reducing Emissions Without Diminishing Revenue
1. SPO is helping publishers reduce their carbon emissions without affecting revenue
At this time, many organizations in the digital media and ads industry are quickly embracing Supply Path Optimization (SPO) to reduce emissions. But publishers are weary to do so in fear of impacting revenue. However, we learned from the publisher panel at the Green Media Summit that unanimously, SPO is worth the effort from a revenue and carbon emissions perspective. From the publishers that had already started their SPO initiatives, they found no negative impact on revenue.
As Chao Liao, SVP, Revenue Operations & Data Strategy at Insider Advertising said,
“From a Q1 standpoint, we reduced our overall general carbon by about 20% and we're not seeing any kind of yield impact.”
Read More: Why The Ad Industry Should Focus On Scope 3 Emissions — Sharethrough
So how do publishers begin with SPO? Evaluating partners and resellers to determine who is contributing what to a publisher’s overall performance and yield. Looking at factors like the number of calls or where and how those are coming in is a good place to start. Even considering how partners interact with each other can make a positive impact.
Mike Racic, President at Prebid advised,
“[Check out] who is complementary to what you're getting from the bigger SSPs and don't be afraid to shut one or two down and see what happens. So if you start there, you're gonna get more efficient.”
Alternatively, working with resellers can be beneficial for publishers. If resellers bring value to publishers by enabling them to draw in unique demand or by increasing yield in other countries where publishers might have less of a sales presence. Regularly A/B testing and validating yield from SSPs and other partners and testing new connections helps publishers also benchmark other supply paths.
Additionally, working with many resellers and SSPs can actually be a detriment to publishers’ overall yield. Calls start to get duplicated between supply paths and cannibalize higher CPMs simply because the lower CPM calls were answered first.
This was echoed by Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic & Yield at Recurrent,
“We're taking a less is more approach with the way in which we broadcast our inventory. And we've definitely found many, many scenarios of, hey, we don't really need these handfuls of partners because they're not contributing to our overall yield game.”
So publishers need not fear SPO as was reassured by Kenrika Mazuch, Product Manager at Mediavine,
“Evaluate your partner performance and don't be afraid to eliminate your weakest performing partner.”
2. Publishers are reevaluating their sites and tech infrastructure for sustainability gains
Next, there are many different ways that publishers can maximize their sustainability gains by taking a closer look at their tech infrastructure and sites for any inefficiencies. From design considerations to optimizing and removing dated scripts, fonts and cookies, there are many ways that publishers can approach their sites to reduce emissions. Some of the more simple changes that publishers can make are switching to servers that are more energy efficient and powered by renewable energy.
As Kenrika Mazuch shared,
“We actually deprecated auto play and the impact from that was actually really huge. We went from, I think it was about 1.5 petabytes, to about 370 terabytes. And the impact of that was we saw about a 92% in reduction in the data collection.”
Speaking of autoplay, it’s a publisher's best practice to only refresh an ad slot when it’s in view. But what if the user is idle or away? The ads would keep refreshing to no one seeing them. Publishers can implement a time-check where if a user doesn’t interact with the site in x amount of time, then that pauses the ad refresh. Saving the publisher, advertisers and users bandwidth and costs. And further reducing carbon emissions.
Additionally, improving the site and tech infrastructure not only reduces emissions, but it can also mean improved revenue for publishers. The speed at which requests are sent and received, ads displayed on the page, are among other factors that can yield better results and revenue for publishers. For example, the faster a publisher can respond to a bid, then the more likely they are to win.
This was affirmed by Scott Mulqueen saying,
“We're in the process of overhauling our entire ads infrastructure such that it is faster and more effective so that it can send the outbound requests, receive the bids and not lose bids due to slowness of action. We've seen significant results in a cleaner pipeline with more efficient and faster transactions.”
The IAB Tech Lab recently released a starter guide, The Green Playbook, for publishers and other industry players to help guide them toward a sustainable programmatic marketplace.
3. Publishers need a standard framework to meet industry expectations
Lastly, advertisers want clean, sustainable supply or they may refuse to work with high-emission publishers, but how will publishers know if they’re meeting those expectations? Without a standard framework, publishers are left guessing if they hit the mark. Because what one part of the supply chain does affects another, it’s vital that publishers, partners, advertisers and brands need to collaborate on what the standard process is and how they all fit in that process.
As Chao Liao put it,
“When it comes to an industry effort like this I think we all need to sit down on the table to say, hey, who's doing which part? And how do we affect the entire ecosystem?”
But SPO is only part of the solution. A publisher might have the cleanest, most optimized supply path, but if their sites are heavy emitters, then that stalls progress and still affects other parts of the supply chain. If SPO is the ‘amount’ and the ‘where’ data is coming from, the ‘how’ is the way these inbound and outbound requests interact with each other. And these need to be consistent across the entire programmatic supply chain.
Because part of a standard framework includes a standard metric, publishers can evaluate their performance and the performance of their partners, resellers and SSPs to show advertisers the results.
This was reinforced by Mike Racic saying,
“We are going to start putting out what we are thinking are going to be guidelines that are gonna allow publishers of different sizes to understand basic things like how many header bidders you should be working with? What to do with pixels, how many pixels you should have firing?”
However, publishers don’t have to wait for industry standards to begin measuring their sustainability initiatives. Publishers can set internal sustainability goals to encourage employees to find and implement new solutions that reduce carbon emissions and improve operational efficiency.
Publishers can be the sustainability heroes of digital media and advertising
Publishers have some of the greatest opportunities to reduce carbon emissions out of all players in the digital media and advertising ecosystem. Be it through SPO, a standard framework, or revamped site and tech infrastructures, publishers have various ways to begin reducing their carbon footprint without reducing their revenue. However, publishers still need feedback and input from the rest of the ad tech ecosystem about what they expect from publishers. In any case, collaboration is what will lead the industry to a net zero emissions path.
Subscribe to our newsletter for more Green Media Summit and sustainability updates.
Founded in 2015, Calibrate is a yearly conference for new engineering managers hosted by seasoned engineering managers. The experience level of the speakers ranges from newcomers all the way through senior engineering leaders with over twenty years of experience in the field. Each speaker is greatly concerned about the craft of engineering management. Organized and hosted by Sharethrough, it was conducted yearly in September, from 2015-2019 in San Francisco, California.
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