Fresh out of college as a computer science student, Jon Schulz knew that he wanted to be a marketer, and from day one of his 12-year stint at Ford, he did just that. Throughout his career ups and downs, Jon strategically navigated climbing up the corporate ladder to achieve career success.

Fast-forward and Jon is now CMO at Viant Technology, a role he never expected to hold for 16 years. A background in information technology made the transition into ad tech smoother than expected, especially now with advertising completely reliant on technology.  

“It translated pretty well because it was pre-internet when I got all my training. So I took classes like DOS, D-Base, and Qobuz, which are archaic today. But coding languages tend to be pretty consistent,” Jon explained. 

Nowadays, he’s shifted his focus to sustainability. While some question whether digital advertising has a real environmental impact, the data says otherwise. Digital ads are an invisible yet significant polluter. The advertising industry accounts for 3.5% of global carbon emissions, a percentage destined to climb without changes.

Digital Ads Pack the Carbon Punch of Thousands of Global Flights

Yes, you read that right. Although that ~3.5% sounds small, there is more than meets the eye. When it comes to factories, airlines, and all other aspects that produce carbon, the waste digital advertising produces is not traditional. It’s like seeing a car driving down the road and emitting harmful fumes. It can be hard to understand.

Ad tech uses a lot of electricity, and much of that energy is fossil fuel-driven. 

“Everything’s shifting to digital, and digital requires electricity,” Jon explained. “That’s where the carbon comes from. The evolution of AI is even hungrier for processing and computing. It uses even more electricity.” 

A recent report by The Times entitled “Making AI Less Thirsty” reveals that the latest Big Tech sustainability reports show double-digit increases in water consumption by Google (17 percent), Microsoft (22.5 percent), and Meta (17 percent). What’s worse? ChatGPT and other Gen AI platforms need four times more water to respond to queries than previously presumed. You may be wondering how AI and water are connected, but the water is used to cool down the data centers. This demand is growing as AI is only getting more advanced. 

The environmental impact extends far beyond electricity. Production costs associated with the many events and conferences we attend also contribute to the carbon footprint. Giveaways also have an effect. 

“I was at a Detroit Lions game where they handed out electric wristbands to the crowd,” Jon says. “By the end, about 60,000 were discarded on the ground. That’s a lot of unnecessary waste.”

Signage and creative also play key roles in stifling sustainability. Production, travel, and logistics for advertising campaigns also contribute to the waste. “Every time we shoot an ad, whether in LA or Poland, the travel and resources add up,” Jon points out. “We can’t erase it overnight, but we can start being more mindful.”

The Road Ahead: Balancing Profit and Planet

Very few companies are acting on sustainability efforts, despite widespread interest. According to Viant research, 70% of advertisers express interest in sustainability, but only 10% take real steps to implement changes. Viant’s Adtricity initiative aims to shift this by rewarding advertisers with renewable energy credits for every dollar spent, helping decarbonize the entire programmatic supply chain.

“Green inventory is already a reality,” Jon explains. “Publishers have started adopting carbon-free practices, and we’re empowering the industry to make more sustainable choices.”

While many companies are eager to adopt sustainability practices, the challenge lies in maintaining them when revenue metrics start to dip. “The real test comes when sustainability efforts impact the bottom line,” shares Jon. “Will companies stick with it?”

There may never be a perfect solution, but the industry is moving in the right direction. The push for greener practices in ad tech is just beginning, and while it may be a slow process, progress is being made.

“We can’t change everything overnight, but small, conscious steps will drive us toward a more sustainable future,” Jon explains.

The post The Unseen Environmental Cost of Digital Advertising and the Push for Sustainability appeared first on AdMonsters.

Sometimes the hardest part of achieving a huge goal is figuring out how to get started. Take reaching net zero. Digital ad tech is a carbon-intensive industry. Everything we do is virtual, demanding electricity and power. How does one get their head around it?

“The first thing people in the digital advertising space need to understand is the why. Why does sustainability matter to their business?” asked Julia Li, Director of Sustainability at Mediavine. For Li, it boils down to three components.

A Threefold Approach: Ethics, Compliance, and Finance

The first is an ethical concern. Employees don’t want to be in a business that actively contributes to the climate crisis. Ethics matter for employee engagement and recruiting.

The second component all companies need to consider is compliance, which is quickly becoming an urgent issue. For instance, companies that do business in Europe will need to comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a directive requiring companies to report on the impact of their activities on the environment and society beginning in 2024 and report them in 2025. Late last year, California adopted two laws that will require public and private companies doing business in the state to disclose their greenhouse gas (GHG) and their climate-related financial risks. And last month, the SEC adopted a rule with the same requirements.

The third component, Li explained, is financial. Brands and marketers will demand more sustainable inventory. Their customers and employees are very concerned about the climate, and advertising is a huge opportunity for brands to meet their sustainability goals. 

Measuring to Master: The Role of Data in Sustainability

But as Li points out, doing what’s right for the planet happens to overlap with what’s right for the industry. Take lazy loading, one of the recommendations of IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Playbook. Mediavine adopted the tactic years ago to decrease data usage so that publisher sites can load faster. Faster load time means visitors are less likely to click away, and it’s good for SEO rankings. And as it happens, it lowers the carbon emissions of each ad while meeting performance goals, since data is only transacted when the ad is viewable.

“All companies that want to promote the industry’s long-term goals and keep their businesses profitable will find the IAB sustainability best practices very helpful,” Li explained. “We did a lot of things to improve efficiency, and an unintended consequence was that we also lowered our carbon emissions.”

Recently, Mediavine announced a partnership with 51toCarbonZero to help the company get its house in order.  51toCarbonZero helps companies measure, communicate, and improve their carbon footprint to achieve net zero. “These are important steps especially if, as a publisher, you want to promote the sustainability of your inventory to brands that are conscious of the carbon footprint of their marketing activities,” Li said. 

For Mediavine, measuring its Scope 1 and 2 emissions is straightforward, as the company’s workforce is completely remote. “Ninety-nine percent of our emissions are Scope 3, and 51toCarbonZero will help us identify all of the different buckets of activities that are contributing to Scope 3 emissions so we can feed that data into our internal analysis.”

Measurement and reporting is the first step in the path to net zero, as you can’t reduce what you can’t measure. “We’re looking to 51toCarbonZero to shed light on our blind spots. Is our data center the biggest contributor to our carbon footprint? Is it employee travel? We don’t actually know. Measuring will allow us to understand the levers we can pull that will have the biggest reduction of our carbon emissions,” Li explained.

Identifying Opportunities for Reduction in Carbon Footprint

There are some low-hanging fruit for data-intensive industries like digital advertising. Data centers are carbon-heavy, but partnering with a company, like AWS, that uses renewable energy to power their centers can go a long way in reducing emissions. “This is one way the companies can scale their impact,” Li said. She encourages business leaders to examine the claims of their providers to ensure they’re using renewables and not just buying offsets.

Another low-hanging fruit is in streamlining data processing, which requires looking at the ad-tech stack and how many vendors are present in the bid stream. “Mediavine is 99% direct, we don’t use any resellers. We constantly A/B test our SSP partners and eliminate the underperforming ones. That focus on efficiency and reducing middle players is good for publishers, but it also lowers our data processing and shrinks our carbon footprint.”

In other words, considering the long-term goals of a business is grounded in the same principles as planning for sustainability. It’s putting the long-term future ahead of short-term profits. 

The post Mediavine’s Julia Li Champions Sustainability in Ad Tech, Paving the Way to Net Zero appeared first on AdMonsters.

It almost feels like Brian O’Kelley, CEO and founder of Scope3, just stepped off the operating table. While on stage at Green Media Summit, he openly shared his surgery experience with the audience, not hesitating to discuss his recent ordeal. He reassured the crowd that he felt great, especially considering that it had been only 30 days since his open heart surgery. 

There’s a major commonality between his heart and the ad tech ecosystem. They both have leaky pipes. “Advertising is the lifeblood of the internet,” O’Kelley explained to a packed room. Ad tech is the heart. The role of ad tech is to pump out those ads, just as the heart pumps out blood, but the harder we pump our ad tech heart, the more we damage the system.”

His heart surgery serves as a poignant metaphor for the resilience required in our industry. He shared a memorable moment from his recovery: upon waking up, he asked his doctor what he missed while he was under. The doctor reassured him that he fixed his heart with just three stitches, yet the miracle was in how they opened and closed his heart to make the repair. This story resonated deeply, mirroring the delicate yet transformative challenges we navigate in ad tech.

Like O’Kelley’s surgical repair, many of ad tech’s problems can be solved with just three stitches’ worth of ideas—straightforward solutions to complex challenges. But the real difficulty lies in effectively implementing and executing these great strategies. 

Brian O’Kelley’s Strategies for Repairing the ‘Leaky Pipes’ of Ad Tech

To fix the leaky heart of the internet, two things must be done.

1. Utilize the IAB Tech Lab’s Global Placement ID (GPID) to discuss inventory and enhance precision in ad placements. It’s time to shift the conversation from merely domains to incorporating specific ad placements. The GPID is a consistent identifier across ad tech platforms facilitating this expanded dialogue.
2. Derive a framework for identifying problematic ad placement behaviors. “Ads should render when they are on your screen; they should not render when they are at the bottom of the screen where you can’t see them. They shouldn’t auto-refresh where you can’t see them either,” O’Kelley explained. 

To identify the issue within ad placements, Scope3 conducted a study of about 700,000 instances and discovered that 14.3% of these placements were problematic. This revelation introduces new complexity for the industry, especially as it struggles with issues related to MFA and high-emission sites. 

Scope3 and Sharethrough have responded to the challenge by developing GMP+, a groundbreaking solution integrating placement-level data into Sharethrough’s platform. This innovative approach allows buyers to purchase green media products at the placement level. In addition to features like MFA blocking and high carbon website blocking, GMP+ also enables blocking previously unblockable problematic placements, enhancing control and precision for media buyers. Now available via Sharethrough, GMP+ will help marketers gain more quality with less carbon.

Driving Results Without Being Wasteful 

During an unexpected twist in his keynote, O’Kelley invited Kyle Vidasolo from Omnicon to the stage to provide a buy-side agency perspective. At Omnicon, the focus is on securing the best placements for brands, emphasizing the strategic importance of each placement. Performance is key, and driving those results is critical.

“There’s been no real solution for this, just a bunch of duct tape,” Vidasolo said. “The goal is to fix this once. Running ads that aren’t driving results is wasteful, but guaranteeing outcomes is how you drive results. Agencies take risks for their brands and put the money where their mouth is. So it’s really about honing in on our partnerships with publishers and making sure we drive those results.”

Vidasolo also suggested that purchasing strategies need to evolve beyond traditional CPM models to foster sustainability. It starts with outcome-driven results, but agencies must consider sustainable strategies before investing.

The Future is Green

ROI is as precious as gold. Marketers and agencies will invest where they see the highest returns. It’s about driving effective placements that work better, not harder. Even as publishers, we are all still marketers, we need to create compelling stories that connect and motivate us to take action. We are all interconnected in much deeper ways than the “ad tech craziness” that we convene over, according to O’Kelley. 

A recent Scope3 study revealed that 15% of brand spend goes to MFA sites. Following this, Jounce Media reported that nearly half of MFA traffic in the ecosystem had disappeared. Every bid request on MFA sites wastes advertisers’ money and also results in unnecessary carbon emissions.

O’Kelley emphasized the community’s role in fostering change using its collective power. “The goal is to get the entire industry to recognize that using global placement IDs makes the internet more effective and more green. We will see almost instant adoption,” he concluded. 

The post Scope3 and Sharethrough Partner to Combat Problematic Placements appeared first on AdMonsters.

Carbon Intelligence Platform Cedara recently announced the launch of its Reduction Marketplace, an innovative solution to help reduce corporate and supply chain emissions in the digital advertising space. 

As part of the launch, Cedara worked with full-service digital marketing agency, Croud, and adaptive streaming technology platform, SeenThis, to empower Pret to reduce carbon emissions. 

A team of individuals with experience in media and ad tech  founded Cedara because they were passionate about sustainability. The company’s aim? To make an immediate impact on sustainability efforts in digital advertising, particularly as the industry works toward a Net Zero Carbon Emissions goal. 

What is Ad Net Zero? How Can We Achieve It?

The climate emergency is affecting the entire world, and it is an issue that can only be effectively addressed as a group effort. Ad Net Zero is an organization based in the U.K. that was founded by the combined effort of the ANA, 4A’s, and IAB to help brands, agencies, publishers and ad tech companies achieve net zero carbon emissions. 

Ad ops professionals are working toward a goal of net zero emissions by 2030, and the first step toward achieving this is understanding how much carbon each company is producing. Companies like the recently founded Scope3 are forwarding the effort to help organizations in the industry measure and reduce their carbon footprint. 

Once each company knows how much carbon they are putting into the environment, they can work on reduction efforts – the second step to achieving net zero. The advertising inventory that causes the largest carbon footprint is also the lowest quality inventory. Eliminating this low quality inventory can help companies’ bottom line by reducing waste while simultaneously lowering emissions. 

The final step is removing any excess carbon that could not be eliminated in reduction efforts. This is accomplished using carbon offsets from reliable companies, such as Climate Impact Partners. Following these important steps is essential to helping digital advertising reach its goal of net zero by 2030. 

Prioritize Sustainability Before It’s Too Late

Sustainability is something that everyone is talking about across almost every industry, but why is it important for publishers to limit their carbon emissions? The ugly truth is that digital advertising is one of the worst offenders of emissions – in fact, we are up there with the airline industry. Many may see sustainability efforts as an unnecessary burden, but in fact being more eco-conscious is beneficial to your bottom line. 

Sustainability can help mitigate risk. Limiting the number of bloated and unproductive demand paths limits the operational risk involved in seeking to expand reach. It can lead to more intentional operations by limiting the number of bid requests, many of which are duplicates and therefore wasteful. 

Being green can also help a company attract and retain talent because many younger workers are endeavoring to work for organizations that care about their environmental impact. Working together to achieve these objectives can also make workers feel more in touch in their company’s mission and culture. 

Cedara is Helping Publishers Reach Their Goals

Cedara is designed to measure and reduce carbon emissions across the entire supply chain using software and automation. It helps companies track their emissions and reduction efforts as they aim for net zero. 

As part of the launch of its Reduction Marketplace, Cedara partnered with Croud and SeenThis to help Pret reduce emissions for its video ad campaigns. By leveraging SeenThis’ integration, the impact of switching to SeenThis’ proprietary streaming technology during the marketing planning stage was evident. It also measures the overall campaign footprint, and quantifies avoided emissions. 

The results of integrating the video creatives via programmatic delivery included:

• Through the use of SeenThis’ video delivery technology, Pret could avoid 2,343 GB data wastage, or 48%, compared to running the same quality creative using conventional ad serving technology.
• When applying Cedara’s models, the carbon footprint related to creative delivery was calculated to 749 kg CO2e, which, when assuming the above lower data transfer would result in overall avoided emissions of 121 kg, or approximately 16% related to creative delivery.
• If also incorporating ad selection and overhead emissions across the media supply chain for campaign measurement which includes business travel, energy, offices, and non-media Scope 3 emissions, Pret’s total footprint was 8,354 kg CO2e.

This reduction in emissions helps companies protect their bottom line, utilize only high quality inventory, and protect the environment, ensuring the ad ops industry remains on the forefront of sustainability efforts. 

David Shaw, CEO of Cedara, says: “We are proud to partner with leading companies advancing the industry towards Ad Net Zero. This collaboration underscores the importance of data-driven decision-making in the pursuit of environmental sustainability.”

The post Cedara Launches Reduction Marketplace to Help Achieve Ad Net Zero appeared first on AdMonsters.

Many brands obtain this status through offsetting — meaning they match an event’s carbon emissions by contributing to other carbon-friendly projects. But the investment in the future doesn’t really offset the damage being done today.

Therefore, offsetting should be considered a minor piece of the puzzle — never the first step in a truly sustainable event process. Carbon reduction, not offsetting, should be considered at every step of the event planning process.

Where Does Your Carbon Footprint Stand?

To reduce carbon footprint effectively, businesses need first to measure their carbon impact as it stands. There are several solutions to measure your company’s carbon footprint, just as many companies offer these kinds of solutions. When considering your impact on events, many of these carbon costs fall under the third scope — put simply, they are costs you don’t have direct control over. These include how attendees travel, the carbon cost of graphics, or food waste. Even with that in mind, there are ways that you can cut down on these emissions — it all begins with proper measurement.

Marketers should think carefully about measuring their event’s carbon emissions because this will establish the baseline from which they can work to diminish their negative environmental impact. Consider each of the scopes of carbon emissions. Everything from your choice of venue to your mode of transportation should be taken into account.

Reducing Your Impact 

Once marketers know the carbon footprint of their events, they can begin to determine ways to cut down on their carbon impact. The amount most companies will be able to reduce will depend on whether they are hosting or attending an event and the amount of elements under their control. 

However, a major factor in all events is travel. Givsly determined that 95% of its carbon footprint was attributed to travel after their Cannes activation. While flying is a quick and convenient means of transportation, the carbon cost is immense — after all, the airline industry is responsible for 2-3% of global carbon emissions each year. 

Companies should consider using a train system, where possible, and utilizing public transportation instead of taking a cab. When airline travel is unavailable, consider flying economy, as this will minimize your carbon impact. Or, consider diminishing your team’s onsite attendance by 10% a year to get closer to a better environmental impact. 

For owned events, marketers have much greater control. While carbon reduction may sound like an expensive process, it only costs more in time than in dollars. And, once you start thinking about carbon reduction, it gets easier and quicker. Adding in time for this research is an essential step in your planning process — below are a few ways you can reduce carbon emissions throughout key elements of your event: 

● Venue: Take the time to explore event spaces in the area you’ll be hosting. Some spaces may even have their own carbon-reducing measures — such as not allowing for disposable tableware or utilizing energy-efficient lighting. For company-sponsored events, consider where you are in relation to your attendees and consider selecting a venue easily accessed by public transportation services.

● Catering: Be conscious of your catering decisions to greatly diminish your carbon impact. On average, meat-based meals have a 14 times higher environmental impact than meatless ones. Plenty of catering services offer affordable vegetarian and vegan options — and these options are often less expensive than a steak dinner for a room of attendees.

● Signage and Displays: Physical signage remains one of the most popular means of advertising at industry events; however, flashy flyers and other physical displays exact an environmental toll. Marketers should consider utilizing digital signage — and in events where this isn’t possible, look into recyclable options. For example, many companies offer sustainable signage programs through recyclable materials that are recycled again after a sustainable activation.

● Swag: Consider your policy on company swag. While this marketing tactic is popular and pervasive at events, data suggests that as many as 40 to 60 percent of people do not want disposable swag items. Removing them from your space can vastly cut down on an event’s carbon cost and save your company their cost of production.

These tactics serve as a starting point to reduce the carbon impact of your company’s events. Accurate measurement should be obtained for additional carbon costs, such as the venue’s lighting or employees’ transportation. Then, after the event, you can look into offsetting options for this unavoidable impact.

Carbon offsetting is convenient, but be wary of partners who overly label activations as carbon neutral. The greenwashing phenomenon is still in effect across the event space, and words don’t always translate to action. Marketers and event organizers must begin implementing simple strategies to drive the industry towards truly reducing its carbon footprint.

The post Let’s Get Real About Events: Carbon Neutral Does NOT Mean Sustainable appeared first on AdMonsters.

As a veteran of the ad tech industry, O’Kelley has seen many changes over the years and hopes to be at the forefront of the next big change that the industry, and indeed the world, needs – a way to do business that is good for both profit and planet. 

That’s part of what he’ll discuss in his keynote presentation at Admonsters Ops next month in New York City, titled “How Ad Tech Became an Environmental Nightmare and How We Can Solve it in 2023.”

The More Things (in Advertising) Change, the More They Stay the Same

O’Kelley began his ad tech career about 20 years ago, and at that time, the digital landscape looked very different than it does today. “When I conceived programmatic advertising, there were no smartphones. There was no social media and certainly no generative AI. The world looks dramatically different,” he shares. 

While some things have remained the same – like using cookies, which O’Kelley confesses surprises him – much of the terrain looks starkly different than it did two decades ago. A number of unintended consequences came along with the creation of programmatic advertising. “There’s no way I could have thought that by auctioning ads to the highest bidder in real-time, the world would change as much as it has. I think that’s what’s exciting and scary,” notes O’Kelley.

Now, he is working toward a future of sustainability in ad tech where progress is made, while learning from the past – considering future impact and ensuring no one is left behind. He and his team at Scope3 are operating with the understanding that sustainability is a foundational need and responsibility and that these initiatives should not leave anyone out, including small business owners and minority-led businesses. 

“I want this to be a force for good,” O’Kelley shares. This initiative, he says, should be done responsibly so that in ten years, we are looking back with pride rather than regret. 

Shaping Environmentally Responsible Ad Tech

While no one has a crystal ball to ascertain what is on the horizon, O’Kelley and Scope3 are working diligently to create a more sustainable future for the ad tech industry by ensuring environmental accountability makes good business sense. 

“I can’t predict everything, but it’s really important to us to be accountable to ourselves, but also accountable to the industry and accountable to the citizens of the world. We impact a lot of people in this industry. And I think we must keep them in mind with the innovations we roll out,” he says. 

This passion for sustainability began when O’Kelley was in high school. He lived in Eugene, OR. when friction existed between the environmental damage caused by the logging industry and the people whose livelihoods depended on the timber business. 

“It’s very interesting to see this tension between business and environment, and I feel like I’ve lived with that tension my whole life. I think of Scope3 as a natural evolution: what if you could do both? What if you could be good for business and good for the environment? What if these weren’t at odds?” O’Kelley suggests. 

To this end, Scope3 is trying to make sustainability the profitable thing to do. Although some environmentalists might balk at this approach because people should want to be environmentally conscious for the “right” reasons, O’Kelley says the reason doesn’t really matter. “If you do sustainable things because it makes you money, fine. If we can create conditions that are both good for the world and good for business, it will happen. That is just how capitalism works.”

Putting the Hypothesis to the Test: Sustainability Is Good for Business 

Programmatic advertising creates a large number of carbon emissions due to the volume of servers needed to power real-time auctions (many of which are often auctions within auctions) to see who can secure end-user impressions. However, it is still uncertain what the overall environmental impact of this energy usage is, which is the first step to fixing the problem. 

Explains O’Kelley, “The first thing we worked on last year was, could we create a way of measuring the emissions of every single ad impression on the internet, and we’re not quite there yet. We started with programmatic, so we’ve done display, app, and CTV. We’ve just added social and are working on audio and out of home next. There’s a lot of ground to cover. It’s also a big world; different countries have totally different landscapes.”

While it’s a big project, the data that Scope3 has collected so far indicates it is important to identify the exact sources of emissions in the ad lifecycle and which media properties cause the highest emissions. This will make it easy for marketers to shift spend accordingly to help the industry decarbonize. 

This is for two reasons. O’Kelley says, “One is no money going to high carbon sites means those publishers will have to change their practices. And two is that, just as we hypothesized, the highest carbon inventory was also the worst inventory, meaning that because there are so many intermediaries, very little of the money was actually getting to the publisher, and that’s about return on an investment. If we can get ad spend to shift from non-working to working media, we’d all suddenly see performance improve.” 

Scope3 pilot-tested this hypothesis with big brands. In every case, when the “proverbial green button,” as O’Kelley puts it, was pressed, campaigns consistently reduced emissions by about one-third while maintaining or even increasing performance results. Reducing emissions was both good for performance and the environment. 

“We’ve just released that as a product you can use from the DSP. We’re in the process of getting this plugged into all the major DSPs, and it is called Climate Shield. This is the, I hope, ‘always on’ way to do this sustainable thing. To avoid really high carbon inventory sources and shift your spend to higher performing and lower carbon inventory,” says O’Kelley. 

Putting People First & Increasing Inclusivity 

The “secret sauce” to operating a successful business boils down to one thing, says O’Kelley – culture. “I think having talented, passionate, motivated people is key. Operating with vulnerability and a sense of the consequences of accountability actions is essential.” Of course, a winning strategy and providing a product that people need play a role, but the foundation stems from a company’s people. 

For his part, O’Kelley is a champion of inclusivity within the tech industry. A piece of this is what O’Kelley refers to as a selfish desire to always have the best people on his team, and in part that comes from opening the door to a broader candidate pool. In another sense, though, he believes everyone deserves the same opportunities, regardless of their background. 

“The more we can open doors, the more we can address unconscious bias, not hiring someone from our network who we’ve worked with before because it’s easy, instead reaching out a little further and looking for candidates that might not have the same academic background, making sure that when we promote we are promoting without the inherent bias that we all have, because everyone has biases. If we can acknowledge those, that’s great,” O’Kelley shares.  

This extends to accessibility and designing digital spaces with everyone in mind, rather than just from the designer’s perspective, who may be younger and not experiencing the same challenges as the older adults in their lives. If you don’t make text accessible, you may miss 10-15 percent of the population. “Old people should get annoying ads too,” jokes O’Kelley.

From a business perspective, as he works with Scope3 to increase sustainability in the industry, it is also important to O’Kelley to gain different perspectives on challenges other people may face. He says it is important to help them be more sustainable and understand how Scope3’s technology might impact their business.

“In a selfish way, I think also, these companies should be really successful and profitable over time. And I want to be part of that. I want to be part of the future, not stuck to the past,” he contends.

The post Visions for a Sustainable and Inclusive Future: Brian O’Kelley’s Inspiring Perspective appeared first on AdMonsters.