Brian Murphy has been in the digital ad-tech industry since the 1990s, working at various companies, including DoubleClick, Yahoo! and Google. In 2020 he joined OpenX as Senior Vice President, Buyer Development, getting involved in the ad tech company’s path to net zero. 

To say the experience changed his life is an understatement. Opting to focus on lowering the carbon footprint of the digital advertising industry, Brian left OpenX to launch the Alpine Project, a consultancy that helps advertising agencies, ad tech platforms and publishers create and implement environmental sustainability strategies. 

The goal is to help everyone in the industry future-proof their businesses, unlock new revenue opportunities, and leave the planet in a better state. 

AdMonsters spoke with Murphy about Alpine Project’s progress, how brands and agencies can measure the environmental impact of their ad spend, why ad tech companies should start operating on cloud-based platforms, greenwashing and so much more.

AdMonsters: The internet, including digital advertising, accounts for approximately 3.7% of carbon emissions. You launched Alpine Project to help advertising and technology companies measure, reduce and remove carbon from their operations. How are we doing?

Brian Murphy: We’re making progress but there is more work to be done. A good indicator of how any industry is doing is the number of companies that have publicly reported their verified emissions data and validated their science-based emissions reduction targets. Those are the first two important steps to any corporate climate action plan. If we look at the biggest ad-spending brands, many of them have taken these steps. And the six largest ad agency holding companies have done so as well. 

But if you look at ad tech, it’s a much different story. There are only a handful of pure-play ad tech companies listed in the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) database as having set an emissions reduction target and even fewer with publicly reported verified emissions data. So ad tech has some catching up to do. 

Another good indicator for the ad sector is the support of Ad Net Zero, the non-profit organization that started out of the UK’s Ad Association three years ago and launched a US chapter in early 2024. There are now over 100 Ad-Net-Zero-supporting companies in the US, including many major brands, agencies, and ad tech platforms. There are five Ad Net Zero working groups, and this is where real education and action is taking place. It has been really encouraging to see so many companies join this important organization and get involved in these working groups. 

AdMonsters: Don’t you co-chair one of the Ad Net Zero working groups?

BM: Yes, I co-chair Working Group 1, which focuses on measuring and reducing emissions from the business operations of advertising companies. This working group tackles the fundamentals of any corporate climate action strategy. We bring in guest speakers and address questions such as: how does an advertising agency or media company conduct a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory? Why is third-party verification important? What is the best way to report emissions data? And what are the steps required to set and validate a science-based target? And of course, how can companies in the ad sector make real progress against reduction targets and become more environmentally sustainable businesses?

AdMonsters: Is setting a target to reduce carbon emissions a requirement for Ad Net Zero?

BM: The leadership at Ad Net Zero has asked that all supporting companies set a science-based emissions reduction target and validate it with a third party such as the Science Based Targets initiative, and provide regular updates on progress against these objectives. 

Setting a science-based target takes work. It requires at least one year’s worth of GHG emissions data, so the company has a baseline year from which to reduce its annual Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions across its business operations and value chain. One of the topics we cover in Working Group 1, is how to begin that process and what standards to follow so it’s being done the right way.  

AdMonsters: According to the ANA, carbon-heavy sites like MFAs are on the rise. We also know that generative AI is pretty carbon-intensive. What do these trends do to the greenhouse gas inventories these companies have reported?

BM: It’s an interesting question of where those things will show up in a company’s GHG inventory reports. The good news is that the ad industry doesn’t need to start from scratch. The GHG Protocol provides a reporting template for any company to disclose its scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions data. But, the reporting template was designed for companies from “heavy” industries that might have factories, warehouses and delivery vehicles. Ad tech companies typically don’t have these types of assets. But we do have office buildings, data centers, business travel and commuting, etc., all of which will appear on a GHG inventory. 

If an ad tech company is using AI, the energy to power will have significant emissions associated with it.

If an ad tech company is using AI, the energy to power will have significant emissions associated with it. But how it gets reported can be tricky based on whether the tech runs on data centers (typically scope 2)  or with a cloud provider like Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or  Amazon Web Services (AWS) which would usually be reported under the scope 3 subcategory 1: Purchased Goods & Services. 

Ad tech companies that move their tech infrastructure from physical data centers to the cloud are seeing a massive reduction in their emissions numbers. In addition to just being more efficient, GCP and AWS in particular,  are doing a lot of work to power their platforms with renewable energy. Both also provide dashboards to let their clients measure the emissions that come from their usage of these platforms. In addition to helping with reduction strategies, this also makes the GHG reporting process a lot easier. 

Without a doubt, AI is a major contributor to the overall electricity use of the broader digital economy. At the same time, AI is really good at solving problems. I believe that AI will play an important role in helping to solve the climate problem in ways we haven’t even thought of yet. But it’s too early to tell if the carbon reduction solutions we see from AI will outweigh its broader carbon impact.

AdMonsters: Last year Google and Boston Consulting Group released a report saying that AI has the potential to mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

BM: That’s right. We can’t assume that these new technologies will be all bad for the environment. It’s important to go to the source and ask the right questions, which brings me back to ad tech. We hear so much talk about how the industry needs to cut out MFA, and unnecessary ad-tech integrations, and that’s true. But at the same time, there are more and more platforms that have moved their infrastructure to the cloud, and then within that, optimized towards data centers that are powered by wind and solar. If more companies did that, we wouldn’t be talking as much about the carbon footprint of MFA sites.

I’m not saying that the industry should ignore things like data waste, advertising waste and non- viewable ads. These things absolutely need to be addressed. But if more DSPs, SSPs and other ad tech platforms start operating on cloud-based platforms that are powered by renewable energy, data waste becomes less of an emissions problem.  

But if more DSPs, SSPs and other ad tech platforms start operating on cloud-based platforms that are powered by renewable energy, data waste becomes less of an emissions problem.  

AdMonsters: That’s totally fair. An analogy I’ve read is that if you’re heating your house with a heat pump that’s powered by solar panels, upgrading your insulation isn’t really a carbon imperative.  What would you like to see happen in 2024 within the ad tech sector?

BM: Really, I’d like to see more companies do what Duration Media is doing, which is reducing inefficiencies in programmatic advertising to create “greener” media solutions. Full disclosure, I’m working with Duration Media on these projects.

Duration Media focuses on understanding and reducing data waste in digital advertising and there are three key sources of this. The first is bid requests. According to Jounce Media, a single digital display ad impression requires upwards of 135 bid requests. That’s a lot of data transfer just for one impression! On top of that, we have cookie syncs (for now) and up to 30% of ads that are never even viewed by an end user. 

Duration Media has done what I hope others will do, which is build green media solutions that help publishers reduce data waste in a way that helps them generate more revenue and helps advertisers buy more viewable, effective, and efficient advertising. Reducing data waste can actually make advertising more effective, helping both the demand and supply sides of the industry – all while reducing emissions from the media supply chain.  

AdMonsters: How can brands and agencies measure the environmental impact of their media spend? 

BM: That’s a very important and timely question. Right now, as an industry, we’re in what’s commonly referred to as the “pre-competitive collaboration” phase. This is where people from various companies within a specific industry collaborate on finding a common framework for emissions measurement, so we’re not all doing it our own way and creating confusion for our economic buyers.  

There is great work being done through a collaboration between Ad Net Zero and The Global Alliance for Responsible Media to create a framework by which we can all quantify the environmental impact of all forms of advertising, from TV to print, and of course, digital. We are expecting a series of announcements on that later this year. Once we’re all following the same framework, advertisers will have a much clearer understanding of the emissions that come from their various media investments. And some brands and agencies have said publicly that the carbon footprint of various media options will influence how they make investment decisions. 

AdMonsters: We hear a lot about greenwashing in advertising when brands make false or exaggerated claims about how environmentally sustainable their companies or products are. Is greenwashing a problem in ad tech? 

BM: Greenwashing is a real problem in ad tech. We’re obviously not marketing our products and services to consumers but we still need to deliberate in how we make public assertions about our sustainability initiatives. And there are plenty of ad tech companies making clams that are textbook greenwashing. 

A good rule of thumb to follow: make sure every claim is verified, validated, or certified by a well-known and trusted 3rd party. If you report your GHG emissions data, make sure it’s verified by an emissions verifier, accredited under the ISO 14065 standard. If you set an emissions reduction target, get it validated by an organization such as the Science Based Targets initiative. And if you make a claim like “Our company has reached Carbon Neutral status”, certify that by following something like the CarbonNeutral Protocol. If you’re doing business with a company making claims about their sustainability achievements, follow the old mantra: “trust but verify”.

In Ad Net Zero’s Working Group 1, we provide supporting companies with a Communications Guideline to ensure we’re all using the right terminology and backing up with the proper verification, validation, or certification. 

AdMonsters: Is there a message you’d like to send to the entire industry?

BM: I’d like to see our industry solve the carbon challenge both for the campaign and the company. What I mean by that is that we can’t just talk about making advertising production or media buying more sustainable. We need to be running more sustainable companies. 

Right now there is a lot of talk and focus on the campaign. There’s the IAB Tech Lab Sustainability working group as well as Ad Net Zero’s Working Group 3 which focuses on media buying and planning. There are a lot of conversations happening in these groups, on stages, on podcasts and in articles around how we can make media, and digital media in particular, more environmentally sustainable. That’s great. These conversations need to happen.

What we’re not talking about enough is how to make advertising companies — agencies, ad tech platforms and media companies — more environmentally sustainable businesses. The Chief Sustainability Officers at many of the world’s biggest brands require their supply chain partners to disclose their emissions data and reduction targets. When those brands start to ask their ad tech and media partners for the same level of transparency— which they will — we need to be ready. And with new rule changes from the State of California, the SEC and the European Union, some ad tech companies will need to disclose emissions data as a regulatory requirement.

So it’s time for all companies in our industry, big and small, public and private, to take the first step and measure, verify, and report their emissions data so the real progress towards reduction can begin.

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Brian Murphy is the founder of Alpine Project, a climate consultancy that helps advertising and technology companies create and implement their sustainability strategies so they can future-proof their businesses and create new revenue opportunities. He is also a working group co-chair of Ad Net Zero. Brian is a 25 year veteran of the ad tech industry. He launched the international sales operation at DoubleClick and went on to various leadership roles at Yahoo!, AdMob and Google. He also led Buyer Development at OpenX, the first company in the advertising, technology and media industries to achieve the SBTi Net Zero standard. Brian’s work on this important initiative inspired him to launch Alpine Project as a way to help other companies in the ad sector launch their climate action plans. He is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and The Yale School of Management’s Corporate Sustainability Management Program.

The post Greener Companies, Greener Campaigns: A Dirty Industry’s Quest to Change 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.

When John Osborn hears a calling, he responds. At the start of his career, his calling was advertising, and he passionately embraced it. He joined Saatchi & Saatchi in the late 1980s and has served the industry ever since, working his way up to leadership positions, including CEO of OMD USA and CEO of BBDO NY before that.  In 2022, he heard another calling: sustainability. 

While he still loves advertising, he recognizes that it significantly contributes to climate change. With twin desires of helping the sector clean up its act and leaving the world a better place for his kids, in 2022 Osborn joined Ad Net Zero as the USA Director. It’s a role that allows him to answer both of his callings. He spoke with AdMonsters about his work at Ad Net Zero, and his goal to help all companies within the advertising sector, including the digital ad tech ecosystem, to embark on a path towards net zero.

AdMonsters: You say you joined Ad Net Zero because you felt a calling. Can you explain?

JO: Sure. In many ways, it was a business decision. Clients were beginning to ask about sustainability and for less carbon-intensive campaigns. Sustainability is clearly on our supporters’ minds. At the same time, my kids are also concerned about the state of the planet, and that weighed on my mind as well.

Ultimately, I love advertising, and I think we have a unique opportunity with sustainability. More than almost any other industry, we have a line of sight into our supply chains and our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. That means we have a really good shot at actually measuring and reducing carbon from our operations. We know who our partners are, how content is created and distributed.

What’s more, advertising has been a resourceful industry. We have shown that we can come together to make the impossible happen in order to solve really thorny, hairy problems. So I saw the opportunity to help bring about meaningful change.

AdMonsters: Ad Net Zero officially launched in the US in 2023, how many companies have joined since then?

JO: We have about 100 supporters in the US right now. Joining isn’t a matter of only paying a (modest) fee to cover our expenses as we push forward with tools and frameworks. One of our requirements is that supporters have one year to communicate to the market a science-based goal for carbon reduction. We believe, from an integrity perspective, this is an important element of the program.

When we talk about sustainability, we often focus on the success cases, but I’m a big proponent of creating safe spaces so that we can talk about the less successful stories because we need to learn from them.

AdMonsters: Is this a scary exercise for some companies? Are people worried their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions inventory will reveal bad things about their operations?

JO:  I think that companies should be encouraged to get on the journey, regardless of where they start, because to me, the headline isn’t where they start, it’s the improvements that they make.

When we talk about sustainability, we often focus on the success cases, but I’m a big proponent of creating safe spaces so that we can talk about the less successful stories because we need to learn from them. The fastest way to get to net zero is to learn from what worked and what didn’t, without sharing competitive secrets, of course. A lot of companies are working together to come up with solutions that will benefit the entire industry.

AdMonsters: What advice do you give to companies that are contemplating a sustainability initiative?

JO: My first recommendation is to read up on the topic. There are a lot of really great resources that have been released over the past year or so. Released last summer, there’s the GARM Sustainability Quick Action Guide, IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability task force Playbook for Achieving a Sustainable Programmatic Marketplace — both focusing on tangible actions that can be taken now.

The ANA released its transparency study, and Google’s Sustainable Marketing Playbook which is also very helpful for companies just beginning to embark on this journey, including thinking about the impact of advertising’s creative and messaging. 

One of the first steps is to measure a company’s emissions, and there are a lot of resources out there. For instance, Ad Net Zero works with Green the Bid USA, which provides a framework, resources, and best practices for advertising production work, helping agencies, brands, and production companies adopt more sustainable methods.

And we’ve worked with AdGreen to incorporate its carbon calculator within our dashboard, which helps companies actually calculate how much carbon they generate. We just released a report of the 2,700 jobs that have been put through this calculator, so we have solid benchmarks for the industry, in terms of production size and tons of carbon released.

So there are a lot of really great resources that people in the industry can access to begin their journey.

AdMonsters: Who should take responsibility within a company? Do they need a Chief Sustainability Officer?

JO: Depends on the company. Minimally, they should identify a Green Team of passionate employees within their organization. These employees may want to, on a simple level, organize a clean-up crew, or more strategically lead sustainability programs within the office, such as seeing if the office can purchase renewables from its energy provider, instituting a recycling program, and examining its travel program.

AdMonsters: Do you recommend eliminating employee travel?

JO: We’re in the business of helping marketers make smarter decisions, period, hard stop. It’s not “don’t ever travel.” Rather, the question is how can companies and people be more thoughtful and make smarter decisions about travel. A simple decision about travel is actually an important decision when it comes to carbon emissions. It all counts. 

AdMonsters: What is the impetus behind that criteria, besides goodwill and concern for the environment?

JO: There’s a currency developing around carbon emissions. Why? Because regulation is heating up. For instance, the SEC releases rules for standardized climate disclosures for companies, and while currently held up in litigation, California’s similar law will have far-reaching impacts beyond just the state. Investors need a standard way to assess emissions risk for their investments, and there is growing regulation around claims to consumers as well.

We serve the greater good of the companies that are doing the advertising. Job one for Ad Net Zero is to create the frameworks and the consistent standards on behalf of the industry, so we don’t have a wild west of reporting.

AdMonsters: Let’s say a group of people within a company decide to start a green team. How do they get the buy-in from upper management?

JO: That’s a great question. I’d say that it’s the same as any other business question, which is to make sure the solutions proposed are rooted in business. Purpose and profit don’t need to be at odds with one another. I think one of the reasons why more companies are leaning into sustainability is that it’s more profitable. They’re also finding that it creates more efficient business models around that. If they can unlock the value, they’ll find support for sustainability within the organization.

AdMonsters: The industry has always prided itself on creating ever-better ad units that capture a consumer’s attention. Can advertising be dazzling and carbon-free simultaneously?

JO: Yes. The industry is innovative. Look at the pandemic. Advertising shut down on a dime, but then within two weeks, it reemerged, with big advertisers releasing fresh content. It didn’t take long for advertising to kick into gear using different tools and different behavior. This is just one example of the ability to pivot. Can we create ad units that use data and processing efficiently but engage audiences? Absolutely. Can we clean up the ad ecosystem and also drive growth? Heck, yes. 

AdMonsters: What would you like to see the industry focus on over the next 12 months?

JO: I want companies to measure, manage, and mitigate their carbon emissions. That’s what I would love: three M’s.

There are things they can do immediately. For instance, take a look at your travel policy. Who’s traveling, and for what purpose? Are people traveling halfway across the country to attend a one hour meeting? Taking a hard look at travel will lower admissions, and frankly, will probably make life easier on employees who are often asked to travel too much (something I know from experience).

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John Osborn was appointed as the Director for Ad Net Zero (ANZ) in the United States in late 2022. Originally launched in the UK, ANZ has grown to over 100 supporting companies, and now counts over 65 supporters in the US market, which officially began operations in early February 2023. Under John’s leadership, ANZ’s mission is to leverage the power of its supporters, alongside the ANA, 4As and IAB, to educate, set benchmarks & frameworks, measure and lower the carbon emissions associated across all advertising-related operations. Prior to ANZ, John was CEO of OMD in the US over five years from 2017 until late 2022. John’s experience also includes 25 years of service at BBDO NY, where he served as President & CEO for 13 consecutive years prior to moving to OMD. John has a wealth of non-profit board experience including the Red Cross of Greater New York, Global Dignity, Police Athletic League, AdCouncil, AAF and more.

The post How the Advertising Sector Can Tackle the Climate Emergency 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.

“2024 is shaping up to be a crazy year for the advertising industry. Who knows what will come out of cookie deprecation and greater focus on generative AI.” — Terry Guyton-Bradley, Senior Director, Advertising Technology, Fortune.

2023 was a trying year for the programmatic supply chain, at least from a PR point of view.

It began with Bloomberg News saying it had enough of the open markets and to improve its user experience it would eliminate the channel entirely. Then Digiday published a series of articles, saying open programmatic markets are in a tough spot as the “lowest quality” publishers flooded the auctions. Publishers who continued to rely on them saw a decline in CPMs.  

But the real bashing came in June when the ANA released its Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study, claiming that inventory from MFA sites comprised 21% of the open markets.  

Transparency, a perennial issue for the open markets, continued to be a concern, and publishers sought to form direct relationships with SSPs to create a better, more privacy-centric, seamless user experience. 

But despite the challenges, the open markets are still a vital lifeline for publishers that can’t afford to maintain a dedicated sales force, and its revenue is still predicted to grow.

What will the next 12 months look like for the programmatic supply chain? To find out, we asked 4 experts about the issues — good and bad — that the sector will face. They are:

• Terry Guyton-Bradley, Senior Director, Advertising Technology, Fortune
• Justin Wohl, Chief Revenue Officer at Snopes.com and TVTropes.org
• Scott Messer, Principal & Founder, Messer Media 
• Chao Liao, SVP, Insider Advertising

Let’s dig in.

MFA Conversations Continue in 2024

Trend #1: Made For Advertising sites (MFAs) will continue to spark conversations, particularly around how trading desks spend advertiser’s budgets. Despite efforts in the second half of 2023, there is still a lot of confusion around what an MFA site is and whether they’re inherently bad. In 2024, both the buy-side and sell-side will need to work at articulating what they like and don’t like about MFA sites.

“MFA is the newest catchphrase in the industry. Sites stacked with ad slots have been around since the beginning of programmatic. All it goes to show is that more effort is needed by trading desks to ensure they are landing on reputable properties. There is nothing automatic about programmatic, and throwing your entire spend into the open markets to achieve scale isn’t going to cut it.” — Terry Guyton-Bradley

“In the 2023 MFA analysis and discussion, I never quite heard enough about the actual content itself, on the MFA sites, just the methods of traffic acquisition and the inventory representation to the buy-side. For further MFA scrutiny and cleanup, I implore the industry to start looking at the difference between buying traffic to sponsored/branded content, for example, versus misleading clickbait MFA.” — Justin Wohl

“There will certainly be more discourse, and more people (not me) complaining that Made For Advertising is a misnomer. Yes SSPs will continue to tout their MFA-free supply and DSPs will announce their ability to anti-target MFAs, but that’s just a lot of smoke and sledgehammers.  MFA is such a complex issue, that I think the Industry will only be able to trim the most egregious edges of MFA.  I encourage buyers to define precisely what they want to avoid, without using the amorphous term of MFA.” — Scott Messer

More Industry Consolidation on the Horizon

Trend #2: Industry consolidation in 2024 seems inevitable, driven by ongoing concerns about inventory quality, the deprecation of third-party cookies, and a demand for greater transparency.

“We’ll continue to see consolidation because it takes money to build the technology needed to be more transparent. Smaller shops are putting themselves on the sales block in order to raise money to continue to innovate.” — Terry Guyton-Bradley 

“Surely [consolidation] will be the case with the cookie-alternative providers, the identity vendors who have been jockeying for superiority since 2020. TTD’s UID2 and LiveRamp’s RampID hold the most promise.” — Justin Wohl

Digital Advertising Will Survive Cookie Deprecation

Trend #3: Despite the fret, the digital advertising ecosystem will survive the deprecation of third-party cookies. What will change is rather than one approach (i.e. cookies) to targeting and measurement, many will be deployed. Google will benefit (naturally), as will Amazon TAM in certain scenarios. Meanwhile, publishers may spend 2024 reorganizing their partnerships and shifting some advertising-related processes to server-side environments for better results.

“I venture to say that the advertising industry is one of those industries that is too big to fail. No one has consolidated around a replacement solution. Agencies are continuing as status quo and publishers are working to find individual solutions that will work for their data environments.  Although Google has hypothetically drawn a line in the sand, they are doing it in a way that will allow them to pull back if the results are not acceptable.  We won’t crash and burn.” — Terry Guyton-Bradley 

“Walled gardens will get stronger and money will depart the open web overall. Cookie deprecation will have its own slow-death effects in many areas, but solutions like Protected Audiences API (PAAPI) are poised to make tectonic shifts that will reshape supply chain topography entirely.” — Scott Messer

“The current distribution of buyers that publishers are familiar with is going to change with third-party cookie loss in Chrome, and the introduction of the Protected Audience API audience. I fully expect Google’s own Ad Exchange to be the emergent winner in Chrome, with AdX taking a much larger share (50%+) of inventory, in that browser, in 2024.” 

“If other SSPs don’t take their demand elsewhere, and start winning larger volumes than they did in 2023 in Safari and Firefox, I expect publishers will begin to lighten their prebid participants, or move more client-side bidders that aren’t driving meaningful contribution into server-only environments like prebid server and/or Amazon TAM.” — Justin Wohl

Programmatic Transaction Models Are Expanding

Trend #4: Programmatic transaction models are expanding, as The Trade Desk’s Open Path illustrates. This transformation is driven by dissatisfaction with the traditional programmatic exchange. As a result, buyers and sellers are looking for new ways to transact. 

“There are three trends that are closely related. The first is the SSPs going directly to buyers, the second is DSPs going directly to publishers, like The Trade Desk and Open Path. The third is publishers offering completely self-serve access to their inventory. We can look at these as three separate trends, but really, they’re tied together. What we’re seeing is that certain sectors of the industry are not happy with the game of programmatic exchange or the current types of setup with programmatic transactions. So they’re trying to create new ways to transact by cutting out intermediaries that may not be adding value.” — Chao Liao

Curated Marketplaces Equal Brand Suitability

Trend #5: With heightened concern over inventory quality, curated marketplaces will be seen as a strategy for ensuring brand suitability. But it’s not a panacea as the Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study makes clear. While 19% of ad spend in the open markets goes to MFA inventory, private marketplaces aren’t far behind at 15%. PMPs still have an element of “buyers beware” that will need to be addressed in 2024.

“Curation is certainly a major theme of 2024, but we won’t see any standards emerge here. Sellers can do a better job providing meaningful curation and measurement, but it’s unreasonable to think that there will be any standards for PMPs developed.” — Scott Messer

Sustainability as a Differentiator

Trend #6: More brands will start to ask about sustainability and the carbon footprint of campaigns in their RFIs in 2024, and the prevalence of MFA inventory will complicate those discussions. According to research by Ebiquity and Scope3, MFA sites generate around 26% more carbon waste than non-MFA sites due to the constant refreshing of ads, and numerous connections to various SSPs and resellers. 

“MFA sites are maximizing ad requests per page view as well as arbitraging traffic and cookies, which generate a lot of carbon. Brands that have set a goal of improving sustainability will be very keen to avoid them as a low-hanging fruit. I don’t necessarily see it as solely the SSP’s job to streamline the supply chain. This needs to be done in collaboration between the sell side and buy side.” — Chao Liao 

SSPs Reduce Scope1, 2, and 3 Emissions

Trend #7: More SSPs will follow OpenX’s lead by looking at their internal operations to see where they can reduce their Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions. 

“This year, people will ask, what does sustainability mean for me as an operator, and how do I improve my operations in terms of efficiency and sustainability? I think a lot of SSPs will look at OpenX as an example in the different ways they improved their sustainability and bottom line.” — Chao Liao

Final Words of Advice

“My advice is for publishers to heed the Ghost of Cookies Past.  Publishers must keep an eye on when and how to switch their deterministic identifiers into private marketplaces. For the past two years, publishers opened the floodgates of IDs in the bid stream, which was great for adoption and testing but is now a growing threat to the balance of seller power. Publishers cannot allow vendors to commoditize deterministic identifiers. These are coveted components of the digital supply chain–and ID owners should be rightly compensated for their investments and relationship with readers.” — Scott Messer

The post What Will the Next 12 Months Look Like for the Programmatic Supply Chain? appeared first on AdMonsters.

AdMonsters hosts conferences four times a year, and with each, our keynotes lead by example and teach us all how to be better ad ops professionals. Of course, we have great speakers for each session, but there is nothing like a great keynote to set the day’s tone or end the day with a severe mic drop. 

In 2023, the ad tech industry was preparing for many significant shifts — Chrome cookie deprecation, the generative AI takeover, and supply chain complexity — but we had leaders guiding the industry and learning from one another. 

Here is the list of the AdMonsters keynotes that shaped 2023:

PubForum Miami

With the gorgeous Miami beach at the backdrop, our spring keynotes covered the power of Bloomberg’s first-party data strategies, podcasts’ effect on brand safety, and a live recording of the Minority Report Podcast. 

How Podcasting Is Transforming Brand Safety For Everyone

Speaker: Maria Breza, VP, Ad Quality Measurement and Audience Data Operations, SXM Media, Sirius XM

Quote: “As ad technologists, our job is to make it easier to spend at scale,” said Breza. “I’m eager for the industry to get better at defining and managing adjacency in all streaming environments, tightening definitions of standards and infractions, and getting better at the context and tone words appear in – not just words themselves.”

Minority Report Podcast Live — Developing a Leadership Career in Digital Media and Ad Tech

Speakers: Kerel Cooper and Erik Requidan Co-Founders and Co-Hosts of The Minority Report Podcast; Chris Contreras, Chief Customer Officer, MNTN

Quote: “I am a servant leader through and through,” said Chris Contreras, Chief Customer Officer, MNTN. “I had a pretty horrible experience with leadership early in my career. I told myself that when I had the opportunity and the privilege to lead others, I would help cultivate an atmosphere where folks understood what it takes to move from a junior to a more senior role.”

What Would Bloomberg Do?

Speaker: Janelle F. Faulk, Global Head of Advertising Operations, Bloomberg

Quote: “First-party data platforms offer publishers like Bloomberg a unique ability to offer the context and audience that advertisers need to sustain personalized advertising at scale while thoughtfully cultivating those relationships in a way that maintains the trust that our audience has in us.” 

AdMonsters Ops

While our PubForum conferences are publisher-focused, our Ops conferences in New York bring together all sides of the ad tech industry for a day and a half of ad ops knowledge. The keynotes from this year covered issues from ad tech environmental woes to calling BS on identity and schooled the attendees on all things ad ops. 

Calling BS on Identity: An In-depth Guide to Identity Solutions

Speaker: Shiv Gupta, Founder of U of Digital

Quote: “If it feels like everyone in ad tech is pitching an identity solution for a post-identity world, it’s because they are. But the identity conversation is loaded with BS because everyone talks about it like they know what the future holds. Worse, they’re presenting solutions based on what they know.” 

Redefining Success: Leading With Vision and Innovation in the Modern Workplace

Speaker: Christena Pyle, Chief Equity Officer, dentsu Americas

Quote: “Equal access to opportunities should be available to everyone, and we must look to change our hiring practices. To achieve this, agencies must consciously seek out and hire individuals from diverse backgrounds and provide them with pathways to leadership roles.”

How Ad Tech Became an Environmental Nightmare and How We Can Solve it in 2023

Speakers: Brian O’Kelley, CEO, Scope3; Shoshana Wodinsky, Tech Reporter

Quote: “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?” 

How AI is Reshaping Media Buying and Selling

Speaker: Mark Sturino, VP of Data and Analytics, Good Apple

Quote: AI is playing more of a role from a publisher selection perspective. At least at Good Apple, it is less and less about flash, and it’s more about what are the actual results you’re giving us because, at the end of the day, everybody will be judged based on performance

PubForum Coronado

On the beautiful Coronado Island, the keynotes were all about effective audience targeting in a post-cookie world, taking a step into the ad trenches with an ad tech vet, and a town hall about growing your career through the town hall ranks.

Publishers Take the Wheel: Effective Audience Targeting in a Cookieless World

Speaker: Dr. Jon Roberts, Chief Innovation Officer, Dotdash Meredith

Quote: “We as an industry must get comfortable with non-identity-based targeting and measurement in the next year to 18 months so that when the cookie gets fully deprecated, you’re not trying to figure out how to do cookieless targeting in the second half of 2024 because you’re going to be doing it with little data to play with and a lot of disruption.” 

Lessons From the Trenches – 25 Years As A Publisher Navigating Ad Tech

Speaker: “Grouchy” Greg Watkins Co-founder, AllHipHop.com

Quote: “I did know that the advertising business would be big on the Internet and that this would be a way to directly speak to consumers in a way that possibly had never happened in media history. When you’re dealing with television, it’s usually a one-way transaction. When you’re dealing with the internet, especially at the time, you could develop actual relationships with these consumers, depending on what type of ad campaign you’re running.” 

Growing Your Career Through the Rev Ops Ranks

Speakers: Rachael Savage, SVP of Ad Revenue Operations at Hearst; Brooke Edwards-Plant, VP of Global Ad Ops and Revenue Platforms at Condé Nast

Quotes: “You need to be resourceful. This job can be stressful. It often requires, in some cases, very junior folks working on things that are visible to senior people. You must ensure you build a team that can work independently and problem-solve. Resourcefulness will get you by in everything, not just ad ops. As you rise through the ranks and want to expand into other things, the ability to problem solve and come up with the solution is significant,” said Edwards-Plant. 

PubForum New Orleans 

While New Orleans is known for its spooky environment, our conference had a divine visit from ad tech’s premiere deity. Our keynotes in NOLA included a visit from AdTechGod, who declared his CTV commandments, a rundown on Forbes’ first-party data platform, and a look inside the mind of the buy side.

One Publisher, One Brand: United By First-Party Data 

Speaker: Alyson Williams, SVP, Digital Operations & Strategy, Forbes

Quote: “We can provide a robust, first-party powered story about specific audiences to understand how to better serve our readers with the most engaging and relevant content and to allow our editorial team to understand who’s consuming their content and why.”

AdTechGod’s Commandments for the Future of CTV

Speaker: AdTechGod: The Lord of RTB, God of Programmatic Prophecy, Savior of AdTech Sinners

Quote: Thou Shalt Know Thy Audience — “You can’t monetize effectively if you don’t know who’s watching. Dig into that data, segment your audience, and then tailor your monetization strategies to suit. Data’s your guiding star. Use it to make informed decisions, target your audience, and personalize experiences. Just be mindful of privacy rules, yeah? While you’re hustling with data, be upfront about how you collect and use it. GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy rules are not to be trifled with.” 

I Want To Spend More With You, Really. A Buy Side’s Perspective on Securing Incremental Spend

Speaker: Jay Friedman, CEO of Goodway Group

Quote: “With more than 40% of the market being unaddressable due to cookie deprecation, cookies are more of a signal for directional understanding rather than direct measurement. The best marketers are already utilizing media mix modeling and incrementality testing, but the challenge is helping convey results to the executive team of a brand. Technical knowledge and storytelling techniques are critical to share this information in a clear way.”

The post In the Spotlight: AdMonsters’ Keynotes of 2023 appeared first on AdMonsters.

This year, our Decoder series covered the gamut — iOS 17 privacy updates, state privacy laws, and supply path optimization. If you missed them or want a chance to revisit them, here are the top AdMonsters’ Decoder stories from 2023.

If you see an ad tech term and are still thinking, WTF?!!! This is the place for you. 

Everything You Need To Know About the iOS 17 Update and Its Lasting Impact on Advertising

When Apple introduced its iOS 17 privacy updates, consumers awaited exciting new features, but publishers were concerned about the impact on their businesses. Marketers faced significant updates affecting link tracking, reducing the ability to track user behaviors through shared URLs in messages, email, and Safari Private Mode. 

We spoke with several industry experts who shared advice about how publishers should handle the new updates. They said publishers must prioritize transparent practices, understand third-party data usage, and embrace advanced measurement technologies. It’s crucial to pivot towards contextual advertising, leverage first-party data, and ensure privacy compliance while maintaining engaging ad experiences to uphold user trust.

What Are Made for Advertising (MFA) Sites and Why Are They a Scourge on Ad Tech and Sustainability?

Currently, MFA sites account for at least one in five online impressions, consuming 15% of global programmatic ad spend and generating 26% more carbon waste than legitimate publisher sites.

Major brands are paying for advertising on these low-quality sites, almost certainly without their knowledge. The number of these sites is likely to increase as AI-generated content continues to be more commonplace and as the industry phases out the use of third-party cookies. This is because MFA sites rely in part on outdated contextual targeting tactics to bring in clicks.

Oregon Sets the Bar: Landmark Consumer Data Privacy Bill Becomes the Strongest in the Nation

Oregon passed the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (OCPA). Oregon stood out amongst six states to enact such laws this year, setting the bar as the strongest bill nationwide. Unlike other states’ regulations, OCPA mandates opt-in consent for 13 to 15-year-old Oregonians, adding extensive protections for sensitive data like national origin and victimization status.

OCPA’s data minimization rules could pose challenges, particularly for marketers aiming to match customer IDs for CTV outreach. This law demands businesses to disclose third-party data sharing and categorize entities involved.

“The data minimization is huge. It is one of the biggest issues the trade groups have against the draft federal privacy law. It has the potential to minimize not only data but the value of data. And it hurts creating a profile,” said Wayne Matus, Co-Founder, General Counsel, and EVP at SafeGuard Privacy. 

What Is Dynamic Flooring?

With the help of Keith Candiotti, Founder and CEO of Optimera, we explored the concept of dynamic flooring in programmatic advertising, focusing on publishers’ strategies to maintain ad inventory pricing competitiveness in the open marketplace. Flooring, the practice of setting a minimum price for ad inventory, empowers publishers to control pricing while participating in real-time bidding. Publishers using GAM leverage Unified Pricing Rules (UPRs) to ensure bids meet their minimum price requirements.

However, setting optimal CPM floors manually poses challenges, as publishers face a constant trade-off between maximizing revenue and maintaining ad fill rates. Dynamic flooring emerged as a solution, using real-time data to adjust floors intelligently for each page view. Nevertheless, not all dynamic flooring solutions are equally effective, with some favoring specific demand partners and failing to generate additional revenue.

What Is Supply Path Transparency & Optimization?

According to an IAB report, the ad tech industry is witnessing substantial growth, and they projected it will increase by 5.9% YoY. However, this growth introduces unique challenges, notably the necessity for transparency within the programmatic supply chain. Supply Path Optimization is a solution to enhance efficiency and transparency by reducing intermediaries that don’t add significant value. 

SPO benefits both supply and demand sides by providing visibility into the ecosystem, improving brand safety for advertisers, increasing revenue opportunities for publishers, reducing ad fraud, and enhancing overall efficiency.

For this explainer, Abhinav Choudhri, Director- Customer Success at AdPushup, dove into recent industry developments, such as the implementation of the OpenRTB 2.6 draft, Ads.txt 1.1, and Transparency Center, and how they have further advanced the cause of supply chain transparency and optimization.

What Is IAB Tech Lab’s ‘Green Initiative’?

The IAB Tech Lab’s Green Initiative aims to address sustainability in the programmatic supply chain. Despite the widespread commitments to carbon neutrality by major tech firms and brands in 2021, putting these commitments into action has proved challenging. 

To tackle this, IAB Tech Lab partnered with AdNetZero to establish a standardized emissions framework. Leveraging expertise and available data from contributing members, the Tech Lab plans to expedite progress in this crucial area to counteract the environmental impact while acknowledging the limited time available.

How Can Publishers Boost Their Ad Revenue with Header Bidding?

Automation has transformed business operations significantly. Consequently, companies are compelled to adapt by integrating advanced technologies. Programmatic advertising, particularly Header Bidding has revolutionized ad buying and selling, boosting efficiency for publishers and advertisers.

Header bidding refers to a real-time auction where multiple demand partners bid on an ad impression before it reaches the ad server. By integrating JavaScript code into a website’s header, this technology enables publishers to simultaneously offer ad space to multiple buyers, enhancing transparency and fostering competition among demand sources.

What is vCPM, and How Does It Relate to Viewability?

vCPM, a metric for measuring the cost of viewable impressions, aids advertisers in maximizing ROI and empowers publishers to boost ad revenue. Despite the rise of attention metrics, viewability remains pivotal for advertisers. 

Marketers must ensure ads are not just seen but viewable. Unlike before, ads generated revenue regardless of visibility; advertisers now prioritize viewable impressions. Publishers must understand how to gauge impression costs to monetize their digital ad space effectively.

An ad must fulfill specific criteria to be viewable, typically with at least 50% of its pixels visible on a user’s screen for at least one second. Unlike traditional CPM, which accounts for all impressions, vCPM zeroes in on viewable impressions, allowing advertisers to allocate budgets more wisely and enhance their return on investment.

The post Explain This to Me…Best of AdMonsters Decoder 2023 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.

Conventional thinking often looks at sustainability as an inconvenience, a mere compliance project, or even an additional cost center lacking in business benefits. However, media sustainability efforts can provide publishers with a unique opportunity to reduce operational risks, increase revenue profitably, and take the lead in the industry.

In our daily lives, we’ve all witnessed the transformation of our food supply chain and its profound effects on food security, nutrition, and health. This is our equivalent of the Farm-to-Table movement. Publishers are in a unique position when it comes to driving conversations and change to improve the sustainability of our ecosystem.

Why Sustainability?

The Shift Project estimated the share of digital technologies in global greenhouse gas emissions increased from 2.5% in 2013 to 3.7% in 2019, while the International Council on Clean Transportation reported that CO2 emissions from all commercial aviation operations contributed 2.4% of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use.

The advertising-supported digital ecosystem is an essential part of our digital landscape. As our industry matures and evolves, it becomes increasingly essential for publishers, ad tech, and buyers to address these environmental concerns. Per Scope3’s sustainability report, programmatic advertising alone generates a staggering 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions monthly across five major economies.

From a financial reporting requirement standpoint, the European Union has taken a significant step by requiring public and large companies to report on their sustainability efforts under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This will start to force global brands in the EU region to demand sustainability reporting from their suppliers.

Major brands and advertisers are becoming more aware of their overall environmental impact, ranging from their creative builds and media purchasing to data activations. Top ad agencies have created specific task forces and made various commitments to sustainability. Key industry trade groups have also put together their guidance or task forces around the topic of sustainability. In January, the IAB released its sustainability initiative, which includes best practices and standards. Publishers should expect some early RFIs (Requests for Information) from brands and agencies in the next 6 months regarding their sustainability efforts.

What’s in it for Me?

Beyond the emerging Green Media investment from brands, publishers should view sustainability efforts as an operational efficiency and effectiveness project. 

Risk Management

As an industry, we’ve undergone a huge period of expansion where we continue to add complexity to our ad stack in a push toward incremental gain. Meanwhile, every additional component generates a certain amount of operational risks. When these risks are ignored and accumulated, they can turn into a major liability. Sustainability efforts enable publishers to conduct a proper assessment of operational risks by discovering bloated and unproductive demand paths. Additionally, publishers should manage and restrict excessive data matching and collection, heavy creative elements in ad tags, and more.

Intentional Operations

The development of ad tech has enabled us to do more. Programmatic advertising allows multiple SSPs to conduct auctions with a number of DSPs to offer publishers’ inventory to thousands of potential advertisers at scale. In pursuit of scale, we often become less intentional about our operations when it comes to the value of each connection we enable and the value of each bid request we surface. Overall, publishers should adopt an intentional mindset so that we truly own and manage the inventory.

Team/Talent Sustainability

Attracting and retaining talent is increasingly tied to a company’s values and mission. Sustainability initiatives not only instill a sense of purpose but also foster a positive workplace culture. Furthermore, these initiatives can provide valuable learning and development opportunities for our teams, allowing them to gain a comprehensive understanding of our industry’s inner workings.

Where Should I Start?

To address the carbon impact of the media industry, publishers can take several steps:

1. Audit: Audit the current ad stack and demand-side partners to assess their absolute, relative, and strategic value.
2. Reduce: Implement strategies to reduce the carbon footprint. Start with ads.txt clean-up, then advance to more sophisticated methods like traffic shaping and bid throttling. Lastly, review the content in the bid requests.
3. Train: Align the go-to-market teams and operations teams on sustainability concepts and practices. Publishers can lead agency partners and buyers in sustainable media practices.
4. Innovate: There are ample opportunities to reset the way programmatic advertising operates and to rethink how it may interact with direct and guaranteed deals in pursuit of sustainability. 

Just as the farm-to-table movement transformed the food industry by prioritizing sustainability and transparency, the media industry must embark on a similar journey to reduce its carbon footprint. Publishers have an opportunity to lead in this effort to create efficient operations, foster meaningful partnerships and innovation, and pave the way for a greener, more responsible digital future.

The post Media Sustainability: What’s in it for Publishers? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Too many brands have only cast their focus inward when it comes to sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and purpose. 

This hasn’t necessarily been their intention. These areas are broad and multi-faceted; to be successful, they must touch many skill sets. The issue is that the departments that have historically governed programs to increase values-based efforts have been internal-facing ones like human resources. In some cases, there is no determined owner at all. These internal-facing owners might make traction with how employees participate in these efforts, but they fail to tie them to revenue-driving performance. 

And that’s a massive missed opportunity. Purpose-driven organizations grow three times faster, on average, than non-purpose-driven ones, and 82 percent of consumers are making purchase decisions with purpose in mind. Today, tying purpose and profit together is necessary to be competitive in any market. To do that requires shifting ownership of the former to a department responsible for driving the latter: marketing.

Values, Adrift

HR has never been the right home for sustainability, DEI, and purpose.

This team often owns these areas because, historically, companies have looked at them from an employee perspective. And, after all, HR is trained to measure employee satisfaction and retention above all else. But HR doesn’t play a direct role in how much money a business makes.

I’m not here to say this isn’t a valiant effort—organizations should and must engage employees on how to be more ethically responsible and values-driven because it makes for psychologically safer workplaces. But, knowing brands’ sustainability, DEI, and purpose goals coincide with more significant profit means that a team well-versed in engaging external audiences should execute, manage, and measure them. Marketing fits the bill in several ways.

First, marketing owns the overall brand and plays an integral part in creating it. This starts with mission, vision, and values exercises and cascades down to positioning, value propositions, messaging, and tone and voice. Because marketing intimately understands the brand from all angles—what it stands for and sells for—it can translate that language into internal- and external-facing marketing messages.

Second, like any marketing campaign about any product or service, values-based efforts require their own narrative, and marketing is excellent at storytelling. Marketing can share the overarching “why” of a brand’s values in creative and compelling ways to target audiences across channels—including consumers who are now increasingly purchasing with purpose in mind. This ranges from the company website to video snippets on social media to public relations and everything in between, meaning marketing can embed values-driven messaging anywhere and everywhere. And because marketing is across all campaigns, they know the right opportunities for weaving values-based messaging into other topics. For instance, if marketing runs a holiday campaign, it might be an excellent place to talk about the charities the company gives back to.  

Third, marketing gets to choose the imagery and content across all channels, allowing the team the opportunity to represent diversity and inclusivity. Consider, for example, shifting pronouns to non-binary ones in marketing messages and ensuring that stock imagery doesn’t just depict one race. Marketing can incorporate values across everything an organization does. Values are not just a strategy for a couple of programs and should never feel that way – they should be present in everything an organization does. For instance, Patagonia doesn’t just sometimes care about the environment – their climate-friendly values are foundationally associated with their brand because of consistent action and marketing of that action consistently.

Fourth, marketing also owns events, which exact a heavy toll on the environment. They can restructure some of this budget to avoid needing to heavily re-print collateral and signage and produce so much SWAG. Some materials can be reused between events, or landing page links and QR codes can replace printed information.

Measuring the Monetary Value of Meaning

Suppose companies want to tie their purpose to profit. In that case, they must rely on the department trained to set goals, effectively communicate internally and externally and track the benefit of every dollar spent.

Marketing should set values-based goals for the entire organization and understand how they impact every aspect of the business. This enables them to influence where focus and budget are going so that they can help all departments make quick adjustments. For instance, many businesses want to work with partners whose values align with their own and want the data to back it up. Marketing and sales teams must work together to ensure tangible impact and that it’s being conveyed accurately to prospective partners.

Then, marketing can lead the charge of incorporating these values into every aspect of the business. I recommend that marketers test smaller activations around their values vs. waiting for everything to be perfect. Don’t lock your stakeholders in a room for six months to debate your values. Know that you won’t be all things to all people. Move quickly and thoughtfully and optimize from there.

Marketing will measure how internal teams activate against values and how their external audiences engage with them. As marketing already measures external engagements with key audiences such as prospects, press, and partners, they can get a holistic view of how values-based messaging resonates across each. They already have many systems and measurement methodologies necessary for proving the value of, well, values. And they’re in luck because a new suite of solutions is emerging to emphasize company values while achieving and exceeding business goals. Many are designed to be turnkey, easily incorporated in place of historical solutions, and offer additional resources to build a tight societal impact roadmap. Marketers should determine which solutions best align with their unique goals and incorporate these new strategies into their daily operations.

A marketing team can only achieve all of the above with key business leaders’ buy-in, ongoing support, and reinforcement. Marketing is the natural tip of the spear to lead an organization’s values initiatives because they already work across many departments as part of their broader function. Still, they can’t be the only advocate within the walls of an organization. Every executive needs to be an advocate. If not, they’re not paying attention to how business is changing. Marketing is the rallying group but not the sole responsible party.

The marketing team should lead efforts to determine which partners will help them achieve their value-based goals while driving the business forward. They should own the measurement of all values-based initiatives across the company and use their communication skills to broadcast their social impact successfully. By authentically communicating values and utilizing tools to drive action, companies can enhance their earnings and solidify that purpose drives profit. 

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