For years, the IAB Tech Lab developed frameworks, technology and standards to build a more standardized and robust digital advertising industry, with input from members of all sides of the programmatic supply chain and beyond.
Responding to the industry’s call for sustainability, the IAB Tech Lab formed the IAB Sustainability Working Group, to develop guidelines for organizations to help reduce their carbon waste. Sharethrough has a first-hand lens into the development of the Sustainability Working Group’s recent playbook since Curt Larson, Chief Product Officer at Sharethrough, is a member of the IAB Tech Lab’s Board of Directors and is helping spearhead the IAB Sustainability Working Group. In this post, we cover how the new Sustainability Playbook was developed, what the buy-side and sell-side can do to reduce their carbon emissions and what this means for the future of green advertising.
IAB Sustainability Working Group
The Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the IAB Tech Lab’s sustainability working group. Taking input from all sides of the digital media and advertising ecosystem, the sustainability playbook provides the buy-side and sell-side with tactics and solutions to help reduce their carbon emissions.
The Sustainability working group is also considering working on a measurement standard that marketers, publishers and providers can use to measure their efforts while keeping consistency across the board. First, the Sustainability working group wanted to deliver something quickly with the Sustainability Playbook, because the sooner you start, the better. As Curt Larson put it, “If the fire truck shows up at a house, they don't stop to analyze which rooms are on fire. They just start fighting fire and then they learn as they go.”
Tackling the carbon problem from all sides of the programmatic supply chain
To reduce carbon emissions industry-wide requires effort from all participants in the programmatic supply chain. Considering that supply chain emissions, also known as scope 3 emissions, are some of the largest sources of carbon waste and typically account for around 90% of an organization’s total carbon footprint. This takes a coordinated approach from both the buy-side and sell-side to efficiently and effectively reach the industry goal of net-zero emissions by 2030.
The Sustainability Playbook offers ways for the sell-side to provide signals for the buy-side to make carbon-minimizing decisions, as well as ways to reduce their individual carbon waste. Here are 3 ideas from the Sustainability Playbook that can help organizations become more sustainable.
3 ways to start reducing carbon emissions
1. Supply path optimization and carbon path optimization
One of the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions is through supply path and carbon path optimization. While the two may sound similar, what distinguishes them is for supply path optimization (SPO) carbon reductions are a byproduct, whereas for carbon path optimization (CPO) reductions are the primary goal.
According to the Sustainability Playbook from the IAB Tech Lab Sustainability working group, here are how the buy-side and sell-side can use SPO to also reduce their carbon emissions.
Buy-side
Through SPO, buyers, DSPs, and others in the buy-side should aim to find the most direct impressions possible. By limiting purchases of multi-hop impressions, buyers limit the amount of data transferred which means less emissions. However, it’s not always possible to buy direct, so buyers should also consider indirect impressions where that represents the most direct path available.
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This is where DSPs are in a unique position to help buyers find the most direct impressions. While most DSPs don’t, as of yet, support targeting preferences that include the number of hops, buyers can request to add this support from their DSP partners. In the meantime, private marketplace packages (PMPs) provide buyers with curated, direct access to various publishers, reducing the need for resellers and other intermediaries, thus reducing the amount of carbon emissions generated by each hop and transaction.
Sell-side
How the sell-side can reduce their carbon emissions with SPO is by limiting the number of multi-hop resellers they work with. Publishers should aim to be more selective with their resellers as a way to decrease unnecessary, extra hops and decrease the amount of duplicate bid requests. Publishers need to evaluate how resellers contribute to revenue and whether they provide meaningful gains and adjust their ads.txt files accordingly.
Carbon Path Optimization
Where both the buy-side and sell-side can extend the concept of SPO and maximize their carbon reductions is through CPO. Publishers may choose to only work with SSPs and resellers that are powered by renewable energy and have a low carbon output. Buyers may opt to bid on impressions from publishers within a certain acceptable threshold of carbon emissions. Buyers can work with third parties to understand the carbon emissions of various path options.
2. Avoid Made for Advertising sites
Some of the highest carbon emitters tend to be Made for Advertising (MFA) sites. As defined by Jounce Media, MFA sites are sites that display an excessive amount of ads to cheap traffic they buy from elsewhere.
The Sustainability Playbook advises the buy-side to avoid MFA inventory, for their exceptionally heavy ad load generates higher carbon emissions. In addition to emitting an excess amount of carbon waste, MFA sites provide little to no meaningful performance for advertisers and siphon funds from reputable, lower-emission publishers.
MFA sites take 15% of all global programmatic ad spend and account for 21% of advertisers’ impressions. So why are MFA sites so pervasive? Typically, MFA sites improve vanity metrics for advertisers, such as an increase in CTR or viewability. However, they provide little to no meaningful gains to bottom-funnel metrics such as conversion rates or sales.
By avoiding MFA sites, buyers can divert their spend to publishers that not only have lower emissions but also provide meaningful performance gains. That can lead to higher profits for reputable publishers once MFA sites are removed. And if MFA sites want to re-earn their place in the programmatic supply chain, they would need to make significant changes.
At Sharethrough, we were the first SSP to automatically remove Jounce-defined MFA sites from all PMP deals. Not only that, our Low-Emissions PMP, powered by Scope3’s Climate Shield technology, offers advertisers a curated package without any of the high-emission/low-performing sites, including MFA sites - with no added costs to buyers and no negative impact on performance.
3. De-duplicating requests
It can be hard to determine truly duplicate ad requests. By implementing Global Placement ID (gpid,) the sell-side can provide the buy-side with a way of identifying and distinguishing between different ad slots. This enables the buy-side to bid on ad slots that best fit their campaign goals and avoid duplicate bid requests. Buyers can analyze the provided gpid to find the most direct path to the publisher and gain a more granular look at their ad performance.
The future of advertising is green
Sustainability in digital media and advertising is now a goal for many organizations. As more push to become green, it can be difficult to know where to start and what to do due to the complexity of the programmatic supply chain. Since its inception, the IAB Tech Lab has existed to build a more robust digital ad ecosystem, and sustainability is no different.
The IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the sustainability working group, providing the industry with potential solutions to its carbon problem. Solutions like SPO and CPO, the removal of Made for Advertising sites and placing limits on ad requests, provide a starting point for the buy-side and sell-side to become greener. This is only the start, and more will be added as new insights and innovations emerge. With this in mind, it’s imperative that organizations begin their journey towards sustainable digital advertising.
For a quick and easy way to get started with improving the sustainability of ad campaigns, consider Sharethrough’s GreenPMPs™, powered by Scope3, where over 9000 active brands are collectively reducing emissions and delivering over 1 billion carbon-neutral impressions.
For years, the IAB Tech Lab developed frameworks, technology and standards to build a more standardized and robust digital advertising industry, with input from members of all sides of the programmatic supply chain and beyond.
Responding to the industry’s call for sustainability, the IAB Tech Lab formed the IAB Sustainability Working Group, to develop guidelines for organizations to help reduce their carbon waste. Sharethrough has a first-hand lens into the development of the Sustainability Working Group’s recent playbook since Curt Larson, Chief Product Officer at Sharethrough, is a member of the IAB Tech Lab’s Board of Directors and is helping spearhead the IAB Sustainability Working Group. In this post, we cover how the new Sustainability Playbook was developed, what the buy-side and sell-side can do to reduce their carbon emissions and what this means for the future of green advertising.
IAB Sustainability Working Group
The Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the IAB Tech Lab’s sustainability working group. Taking input from all sides of the digital media and advertising ecosystem, the sustainability playbook provides the buy-side and sell-side with tactics and solutions to help reduce their carbon emissions.
The Sustainability working group is also considering working on a measurement standard that marketers, publishers and providers can use to measure their efforts while keeping consistency across the board. First, the Sustainability working group wanted to deliver something quickly with the Sustainability Playbook, because the sooner you start, the better. As Curt Larson put it, “If the fire truck shows up at a house, they don't stop to analyze which rooms are on fire. They just start fighting fire and then they learn as they go.”
Tackling the carbon problem from all sides of the programmatic supply chain
To reduce carbon emissions industry-wide requires effort from all participants in the programmatic supply chain. Considering that supply chain emissions, also known as scope 3 emissions, are some of the largest sources of carbon waste and typically account for around 90% of an organization’s total carbon footprint. This takes a coordinated approach from both the buy-side and sell-side to efficiently and effectively reach the industry goal of net-zero emissions by 2030.
The Sustainability Playbook offers ways for the sell-side to provide signals for the buy-side to make carbon-minimizing decisions, as well as ways to reduce their individual carbon waste. Here are 3 ideas from the Sustainability Playbook that can help organizations become more sustainable.
3 ways to start reducing carbon emissions
1. Supply path optimization and carbon path optimization
One of the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions is through supply path and carbon path optimization. While the two may sound similar, what distinguishes them is for supply path optimization (SPO) carbon reductions are a byproduct, whereas for carbon path optimization (CPO) reductions are the primary goal.
According to the Sustainability Playbook from the IAB Tech Lab Sustainability working group, here are how the buy-side and sell-side can use SPO to also reduce their carbon emissions.
Buy-side
Through SPO, buyers, DSPs, and others in the buy-side should aim to find the most direct impressions possible. By limiting purchases of multi-hop impressions, buyers limit the amount of data transferred which means less emissions. However, it’s not always possible to buy direct, so buyers should also consider indirect impressions where that represents the most direct path available.
This is where DSPs are in a unique position to help buyers find the most direct impressions. While most DSPs don’t, as of yet, support targeting preferences that include the number of hops, buyers can request to add this support from their DSP partners. In the meantime, private marketplace packages (PMPs) provide buyers with curated, direct access to various publishers, reducing the need for resellers and other intermediaries, thus reducing the amount of carbon emissions generated by each hop and transaction.
Sell-side
How the sell-side can reduce their carbon emissions with SPO is by limiting the number of multi-hop resellers they work with. Publishers should aim to be more selective with their resellers as a way to decrease unnecessary, extra hops and decrease the amount of duplicate bid requests. Publishers need to evaluate how resellers contribute to revenue and whether they provide meaningful gains and adjust their ads.txt files accordingly.
Carbon Path Optimization
Where both the buy-side and sell-side can extend the concept of SPO and maximize their carbon reductions is through CPO. Publishers may choose to only work with SSPs and resellers that are powered by renewable energy and have a low carbon output. Buyers may opt to bid on impressions from publishers within a certain acceptable threshold of carbon emissions. Buyers can work with third parties to understand the carbon emissions of various path options.
2. Avoid Made for Advertising sites
Some of the highest carbon emitters tend to be Made for Advertising (MFA) sites. As defined by Jounce Media, MFA sites are sites that display an excessive amount of ads to cheap traffic they buy from elsewhere.
The Sustainability Playbook advises the buy-side to avoid MFA inventory, for their exceptionally heavy ad load generates higher carbon emissions. In addition to emitting an excess amount of carbon waste, MFA sites provide little to no meaningful performance for advertisers and siphon funds from reputable, lower-emission publishers.
MFA sites take 15% of all global programmatic ad spend and account for 21% of advertisers’ impressions. So why are MFA sites so pervasive? Typically, MFA sites improve vanity metrics for advertisers, such as an increase in CTR or viewability. However, they provide little to no meaningful gains to bottom-funnel metrics such as conversion rates or sales.
By avoiding MFA sites, buyers can divert their spend to publishers that not only have lower emissions but also provide meaningful performance gains. That can lead to higher profits for reputable publishers once MFA sites are removed. And if MFA sites want to re-earn their place in the programmatic supply chain, they would need to make significant changes.
At Sharethrough, we were the first SSP to automatically remove Jounce-defined MFA sites from all PMP deals. Not only that, our Low-Emissions PMP, powered by Scope3’s Climate Shield technology, offers advertisers a curated package without any of the high-emission/low-performing sites, including MFA sites - with no added costs to buyers and no negative impact on performance.
3. De-duplicating requests
It can be hard to determine truly duplicate ad requests. By implementing Global Placement ID (gpid,) the sell-side can provide the buy-side with a way of identifying and distinguishing between different ad slots. This enables the buy-side to bid on ad slots that best fit their campaign goals and avoid duplicate bid requests. Buyers can analyze the provided gpid to find the most direct path to the publisher and gain a more granular look at their ad performance.
The future of advertising is green
Sustainability in digital media and advertising is now a goal for many organizations. As more push to become green, it can be difficult to know where to start and what to do due to the complexity of the programmatic supply chain. Since its inception, the IAB Tech Lab has existed to build a more robust digital ad ecosystem, and sustainability is no different.
The IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the sustainability working group, providing the industry with potential solutions to its carbon problem. Solutions like SPO and CPO, the removal of Made for Advertising sites and placing limits on ad requests, provide a starting point for the buy-side and sell-side to become greener. This is only the start, and more will be added as new insights and innovations emerge. With this in mind, it’s imperative that organizations begin their journey towards sustainable digital advertising.
For a quick and easy way to get started with improving the sustainability of ad campaigns, consider Sharethrough’s GreenPMPs™, powered by Scope3, where over 9000 active brands are collectively reducing emissions and delivering over 1 billion carbon-neutral impressions.
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.
For years, the IAB Tech Lab developed frameworks, technology and standards to build a more standardized and robust digital advertising industry, with input from members of all sides of the programmatic supply chain and beyond.
Responding to the industry’s call for sustainability, the IAB Tech Lab formed the IAB Sustainability Working Group, to develop guidelines for organizations to help reduce their carbon waste. Sharethrough has a first-hand lens into the development of the Sustainability Working Group’s recent playbook since Curt Larson, Chief Product Officer at Sharethrough, is a member of the IAB Tech Lab’s Board of Directors and is helping spearhead the IAB Sustainability Working Group. In this post, we cover how the new Sustainability Playbook was developed, what the buy-side and sell-side can do to reduce their carbon emissions and what this means for the future of green advertising.
IAB Sustainability Working Group
The Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the IAB Tech Lab’s sustainability working group. Taking input from all sides of the digital media and advertising ecosystem, the sustainability playbook provides the buy-side and sell-side with tactics and solutions to help reduce their carbon emissions.
The Sustainability working group is also considering working on a measurement standard that marketers, publishers and providers can use to measure their efforts while keeping consistency across the board. First, the Sustainability working group wanted to deliver something quickly with the Sustainability Playbook, because the sooner you start, the better. As Curt Larson put it, “If the fire truck shows up at a house, they don't stop to analyze which rooms are on fire. They just start fighting fire and then they learn as they go.”
Tackling the carbon problem from all sides of the programmatic supply chain
To reduce carbon emissions industry-wide requires effort from all participants in the programmatic supply chain. Considering that supply chain emissions, also known as scope 3 emissions, are some of the largest sources of carbon waste and typically account for around 90% of an organization’s total carbon footprint. This takes a coordinated approach from both the buy-side and sell-side to efficiently and effectively reach the industry goal of net-zero emissions by 2030.
The Sustainability Playbook offers ways for the sell-side to provide signals for the buy-side to make carbon-minimizing decisions, as well as ways to reduce their individual carbon waste. Here are 3 ideas from the Sustainability Playbook that can help organizations become more sustainable.
3 ways to start reducing carbon emissions
1. Supply path optimization and carbon path optimization
One of the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions is through supply path and carbon path optimization. While the two may sound similar, what distinguishes them is for supply path optimization (SPO) carbon reductions are a byproduct, whereas for carbon path optimization (CPO) reductions are the primary goal.
According to the Sustainability Playbook from the IAB Tech Lab Sustainability working group, here are how the buy-side and sell-side can use SPO to also reduce their carbon emissions.
Buy-side
Through SPO, buyers, DSPs, and others in the buy-side should aim to find the most direct impressions possible. By limiting purchases of multi-hop impressions, buyers limit the amount of data transferred which means less emissions. However, it’s not always possible to buy direct, so buyers should also consider indirect impressions where that represents the most direct path available.
This is where DSPs are in a unique position to help buyers find the most direct impressions. While most DSPs don’t, as of yet, support targeting preferences that include the number of hops, buyers can request to add this support from their DSP partners. In the meantime, private marketplace packages (PMPs) provide buyers with curated, direct access to various publishers, reducing the need for resellers and other intermediaries, thus reducing the amount of carbon emissions generated by each hop and transaction.
Sell-side
How the sell-side can reduce their carbon emissions with SPO is by limiting the number of multi-hop resellers they work with. Publishers should aim to be more selective with their resellers as a way to decrease unnecessary, extra hops and decrease the amount of duplicate bid requests. Publishers need to evaluate how resellers contribute to revenue and whether they provide meaningful gains and adjust their ads.txt files accordingly.
Carbon Path Optimization
Where both the buy-side and sell-side can extend the concept of SPO and maximize their carbon reductions is through CPO. Publishers may choose to only work with SSPs and resellers that are powered by renewable energy and have a low carbon output. Buyers may opt to bid on impressions from publishers within a certain acceptable threshold of carbon emissions. Buyers can work with third parties to understand the carbon emissions of various path options.
2. Avoid Made for Advertising sites
Some of the highest carbon emitters tend to be Made for Advertising (MFA) sites. As defined by Jounce Media, MFA sites are sites that display an excessive amount of ads to cheap traffic they buy from elsewhere.
The Sustainability Playbook advises the buy-side to avoid MFA inventory, for their exceptionally heavy ad load generates higher carbon emissions. In addition to emitting an excess amount of carbon waste, MFA sites provide little to no meaningful performance for advertisers and siphon funds from reputable, lower-emission publishers.
MFA sites take 15% of all global programmatic ad spend and account for 21% of advertisers’ impressions. So why are MFA sites so pervasive? Typically, MFA sites improve vanity metrics for advertisers, such as an increase in CTR or viewability. However, they provide little to no meaningful gains to bottom-funnel metrics such as conversion rates or sales.
By avoiding MFA sites, buyers can divert their spend to publishers that not only have lower emissions but also provide meaningful performance gains. That can lead to higher profits for reputable publishers once MFA sites are removed. And if MFA sites want to re-earn their place in the programmatic supply chain, they would need to make significant changes.
At Sharethrough, we were the first SSP to automatically remove Jounce-defined MFA sites from all PMP deals. Not only that, our Low-Emissions PMP, powered by Scope3’s Climate Shield technology, offers advertisers a curated package without any of the high-emission/low-performing sites, including MFA sites - with no added costs to buyers and no negative impact on performance.
3. De-duplicating requests
It can be hard to determine truly duplicate ad requests. By implementing Global Placement ID (gpid,) the sell-side can provide the buy-side with a way of identifying and distinguishing between different ad slots. This enables the buy-side to bid on ad slots that best fit their campaign goals and avoid duplicate bid requests. Buyers can analyze the provided gpid to find the most direct path to the publisher and gain a more granular look at their ad performance.
The future of advertising is green
Sustainability in digital media and advertising is now a goal for many organizations. As more push to become green, it can be difficult to know where to start and what to do due to the complexity of the programmatic supply chain. Since its inception, the IAB Tech Lab has existed to build a more robust digital ad ecosystem, and sustainability is no different.
The IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Playbook is the first deliverable from the sustainability working group, providing the industry with potential solutions to its carbon problem. Solutions like SPO and CPO, the removal of Made for Advertising sites and placing limits on ad requests, provide a starting point for the buy-side and sell-side to become greener. This is only the start, and more will be added as new insights and innovations emerge. With this in mind, it’s imperative that organizations begin their journey towards sustainable digital advertising.
For a quick and easy way to get started with improving the sustainability of ad campaigns, consider Sharethrough’s GreenPMPs™, powered by Scope3, where over 9000 active brands are collectively reducing emissions and delivering over 1 billion carbon-neutral impressions.
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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