The environmental impact of online advertising represents one of the most underestimated yet quantifiable challenges facing the digital ecosystem today. According to recent comprehensive analyses, digital advertising produces approximately 7.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, a figure equivalent to the electricity consumption of 1.4 million U.S. households. This carbon footprint places digital advertising’s environmental impact on par with the aviation industry and the combined emissions of entire nations, yet the advertising industry’s contribution to climate change remains largely invisible to both consumers and many advertisers themselves. The research presented in this comprehensive report examines the methodologies, metrics, and frameworks currently employed to measure advertising’s carbon cost, while also exploring how technologies like ad blocking and tracking prevention contribute to environmental sustainability. By synthesizing data from industry leaders, academic institutions, and sustainability researchers, this analysis reveals that while significant measurement challenges persist, practical solutions and industry-wide initiatives are emerging to decarbonize digital advertising and align the sector with net-zero targets by 2030.
The Scope and Scale of Digital Advertising Emissions
The Quantifiable Environmental Footprint
The environmental footprint of digital advertising has grown into a substantial contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, though precise measurements remain contested among researchers. According to data from Scope3, the leading provider of advertising emissions measurement technology, digital advertising is responsible for 7.2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. To contextualize this figure, these emissions are equivalent to the annual electricity usage of approximately 1.4 million U.S. households. This scale of environmental impact becomes more striking when compared to other major sectors and industries. The emissions are comparable to the entire aviation and shipping industry of Portugal or the manufacturing and construction industries of Sweden. In the United Kingdom alone, advertising industry emissions rose by 11 percent between 2019 and 2022, with 32 percent of each person’s carbon footprint now attributable to the advertisements they view and receive. These figures suggest that digital advertising rivals transportation and energy sectors in terms of environmental harm, yet receives a fraction of the regulatory attention and public scrutiny directed toward these industries.
Research projections suggest the situation will worsen without intervention. A 2018 study examining the online advertising industry found that it consumed as much as 106 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy and 1,059 TWh of infrastructure globally in 2016 alone. When converted using contemporary electricity emission factors, this consumption translated to approximately 60 megatons of CO2 equivalent. To illustrate the comparative scale, this figure exceeds the combined Scope 1 and 2 direct and indirect emissions of a major polluter like Shell, which emitted roughly 58 megatons of CO2 in 2022. Considering that the world has experienced at least 60 percent more online users since 2016, alongside increased ad production and advancements in ad delivery systems, carbon emissions from online advertising are expected to nearly double by 2025. This projection reflects the explosive growth of digital advertising spending, which exceeded $667 billion globally in 2024 and is expected to surpass $1 trillion by 2025.
Some research suggests even more alarming figures. By various estimation models, digital advertising could contribute as much as 2 to 3.5 percent of global carbon emissions by 2025. The consultancy Fifty-Five indicates that the entire digital ecosystem is responsible for 3.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions produced, with annual growth rates exceeding those of civil aviation. When applied to the roughly 24 percent of web traffic dedicated to advertising and tracking, these models suggest digital advertising alone could account for 1.7 to 2 percent of global carbon emissions. At the individual campaign level, Good-Loop estimates that an average online advertising campaign in the United Kingdom emits 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide. To put this in perspective, a single ad campaign generates emissions equivalent to what seven average people release into the atmosphere over an entire year.
Comparative Analysis and Industry Context
Understanding the scale of digital advertising’s environmental impact requires comparison to other well-documented sources of emissions. A single data center can consume electricity equivalent to the usage of 5,000 homes. The global programmatic advertising industry alone produces more than 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions in a single month across just five major economies: the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and France. This monthly figure of 215,000 metric tons is equivalent to more than 24 million gallons of gasoline being consumed. When extrapolated globally and annually, these numbers underscore the magnitude of the environmental challenge posed by programmatic advertising systems. The worst-performing 10 percent of web domains account for more than 33,500 metric tons of CO2 equivalent every month, suggesting that focused optimization efforts could yield substantial reductions.
The temporal dimension of this problem further emphasizes its urgency. As the Internet continues to proliferate globally and data transfer accelerates, the carbon footprint is expanding rapidly. From 2015 to 2022, the number of Internet users increased by 78 percent, Internet traffic grew by 600 percent, and data center workload increased by 340 percent. In 2022 alone, global electricity consumption of data centers ranged between 240 and 340 terawatt-hours, representing a 20 to 70 percent increase from 2015 levels. These figures underscore that the carbon intensity of digital advertising is embedded within a broader trajectory of expanding digital infrastructure and consumption.
Understanding the Sources of Advertising Emissions
The Three Phases of Advertising Carbon Production
The environmental impact of digital advertising originates from multiple distinct phases within the advertising lifecycle, each contributing measurably to overall emissions. Researchers have identified three major contaminating phases in online advertising production and delivery. The first phase encompasses the creative process, which includes travel, filming, and post-production activities associated with generating advertising content. This phase captures the upstream activities required to produce advertising materials, from the carbon-intensive processes of video production to the travel emissions of creative teams. The second phase involves media broadcasting, encompassing the energy required to host, view, and support the delivery of advertising content across digital platforms. The third and most significant phase involves targeting, which encompasses the increasingly complex technology infrastructure that determines which advertisements are shown to which users. This targeting phase represents the most energy-intensive component because it requires substantial computational power for real-time bidding systems, data processing, and algorithmic decision-making.
Beyond these production phases, emissions also stem from the fundamental infrastructure supporting digital advertising. Ads are responsible for approximately 10 percent of all energy expenditure generated by the Internet. Data centers and content delivery networks (CDNs) that power digital advertising consume enormous quantities of electricity to store and process vast amounts of data. The programmatic advertising ecosystem, which automates the buying and selling of digital ad inventory in real-time, relies on networks of servers that must process billions of auction bids continuously. Each time an ad is served, multiple computationally intensive processes occur: an auction is conducted in milliseconds, user data is processed, and the winning ad is displayed. Additionally, large ad files—particularly high-resolution images and videos—demand substantial bandwidth and storage, further increasing emissions.
Video Advertising as a Disproportionate Emissions Source
Among different advertising formats, video advertising emerges as a particularly emissions-intensive category. Research from Scope3 demonstrates that streaming video ad inventory produces 706.5 grams of CO2 equivalent per thousand impressions (gCO2PM), compared to 330 gCO2PM for display advertising. This means video advertising produces more than double the emissions of display advertising on a per-impression basis. The energy intensity of video advertising stems from the substantial computational resources required to encode, transmit, and render video content. Video files contain far more data than static images or text, requiring more bandwidth and longer processing times. Auto-playing videos present an additional problem, as they consume energy even when users never intended to view the advertisement. Research has specifically identified that video advertising with sound, animations, and rich media elements consumes considerably more energy and has a greater environmental impact compared to static and compact ads occupying less screen space.
The prevalence of video advertising across platforms compounds this challenge. As digital advertising has shifted increasingly toward video formats to capture user attention, the overall carbon footprint of advertising has expanded accordingly. Streaming services, connected television (CTV), and social media platforms have all seen surging video ad inventory, driving aggregate emissions higher. Industry data indicates that video advertising accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of programmatic ad spend, with rates of video ad consumption accelerating across platforms. This trend toward video-heavy advertising represents a headwind against decarbonization efforts unless accompanied by specific optimizations to reduce video file sizes and eliminate auto-play behaviors.
Made-for-Advertising Sites and Supply Chain Inefficiency
A particularly troubling source of unnecessary advertising emissions stems from made-for-advertising (MFA) websites, which are designed primarily to serve advertisements rather than provide meaningful content to users. These low-quality sites create several compounding problems for environmental sustainability. According to research from the Association of National Advertisers, made-for-advertising sites account for at least one in five online impressions and consume 15 percent of global programmatic ad spend. Despite consuming substantial advertising budgets, these sites provide minimal value to advertisers and generate significant digital waste. Crucially, MFA sites produce approximately 26 percent more carbon emissions than legitimate publisher sites. This elevated carbon intensity results from several factors. MFA sites employ dense advertising layouts with high numbers of ads per page, generating substantially more ad requests and technical complexity. These sites make redundant ad calls to multiple supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), and ad networks indiscriminately, multiplying the computational burden without corresponding benefit.
The environmental cost compounds because advertisements appearing on MFA sites reach audiences unlikely to engage meaningfully with the brand message. An analysis of advertiser spending patterns revealed that brands waste approximately 15.3 percent of their advertising budgets on MFA inventory, generating emissions equivalent to a $13.2 million social cost of carbon. This represents pure waste, as these impressions generate no value for advertisers while producing unnecessary environmental damage. The emissions generated by reliable, legitimate publisher sites are 52 percent lower than those from MFA sites, because reputable publishers operate with fewer advertising bids in automated online ad sales marketplaces, resulting in lower technological load. By contrast, MFA sites deliberately maximize advertising density and auction complexity to extract value from advertiser budgets at the expense of both environmental sustainability and advertising effectiveness. The persistence of MFA sites within digital advertising ecosystems therefore represents a critical efficiency failure that simultaneously damages the environment and wastes advertiser resources.
Real-Time Bidding and Programmatic Complexity
The programmatic advertising infrastructure that powers real-time bidding (RTB) systems represents a fundamental source of emissions intensity within digital advertising. Real-time bidding automates the buying and selling of digital ad inventory through live auctions occurring in milliseconds. When a user visits a website or opens an app, an ad request is generated. Multiple advertisers then bid on that specific impression instantaneously through complex algorithms and data processing systems. The highest bidder’s advertisement is then served to the user. This process repeats billions of times daily across the Internet, and each auction requires computational resources. The energy consumed in conducting these auctions—particularly when many bids are placed for single impressions without resulting in successful transactions—constitutes substantial waste.
Research has identified that the RTB process generates significant emissions, particularly when inefficient supply paths create redundant bidding. Many impressions receive bids from multiple intermediaries, creating parallel auction processes that consume energy without adding value. This duplication occurs because the programmatic supply chain often includes numerous resellers and intermediaries between advertisers and publishers. Each hop in the supply chain generates additional data processing and storage requirements. In some cases, over 90 percent of the processing power dedicated to RTB auctions results in impressions that are never sold or are sold through suboptimal supply paths. Supply Path Optimization (SPO) efforts have emerged specifically to address this inefficiency by reducing unnecessary intermediaries and consolidating supply paths. When advertisers streamline their supply paths, reducing the number of hops required for each impression, the carbon emissions associated with that impression decrease proportionally.
Measurement Methodologies and Carbon Metrics
The gCO2PM Metric and Its Significance
The most widely adopted metric for measuring advertising carbon intensity is gCO2PM, which represents grams of CO2 equivalent per thousand impressions. This standardized metric allows for consistent comparison across different advertising channels, formats, and placements. By expressing carbon impact on a per-impression basis, gCO2PM facilitates benchmarking and enables advertisers to optimize campaigns toward lower-carbon placements. The metric proves particularly valuable because it normalizes for scale—a campaign serving billions of impressions can be fairly compared to smaller campaigns by examining emissions per thousand impressions rather than total campaign emissions.
Industry research has established benchmark gCO2PM values across various contexts. As noted previously, streaming video ad inventory averages 706.5 gCO2PM, while display advertising averages 330 gCO2PM. These benchmarks provide targets and reference points for advertisers seeking to reduce their environmental impact. However, substantial variation exists within categories depending on specific placements, publishers, and technical implementations. Scope3’s quarterly Sustainable Advertising Reports track regional and categorical gCO2PM benchmarks to enable continuous improvement tracking and identification of high-performing sustainable placements.
The adoption of gCO2PM as a standard metric represents a crucial step toward environmental accountability in advertising. When advertisers can measure and compare the carbon cost of different placements using a consistent metric, they gain incentive and ability to optimize toward sustainability. Notably, research has demonstrated that significant reductions in gCO2PM are achievable through deliberate optimization without sacrificing campaign performance. For example, demand-side platform Adform partnered with Scope3 across 45 active campaigns in nine countries and achieved a 60 percent reduction in overall carbon footprint. Similarly, Audi cut MFA sites from a campaign in the Czech Republic and achieved 33 percent reduction in gCO2PM against a control group, which itself was 81 percent lower than the market average. Vodafone achieved 40 percent lower carbon footprint with a 12 percent decline in cost per acquisition. These results demonstrate that carbon optimization often correlates with improved campaign performance and cost efficiency.
Measurement Tools and Data Sources
Multiple tools and platforms have emerged to measure the carbon footprint of digital advertising campaigns. Scope3, founded in 2022 by advertising technology veterans, has become the leading provider of ad-emissions data through partnerships with major industry platforms. Scope3 measures quality and carbon impact by analyzing over one trillion ad impressions delivered across web display and video environments. The company’s methodology leverages activity-based accounting to calculate the carbon intensity of individual impressions, accounting for factors including creative size, video length, targeting complexity, device type, and supply chain efficiency.
Good-Loop represents another significant measurement platform offering granular emissions assessment. Good-Loop’s analysis found that for every 100,000 impressions an ad serves, 110 kilograms of CO2 equivalent are released, equivalent to 800 kilometers of driving. The company has developed sophisticated measurement methodologies analyzing over 100 variables to produce what it terms a “carbon signature” for each ad impression. Good-Loop’s research of 9 billion impressions found that ads not meeting viewability criteria were responsible for 42 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, representing 3,650,457 kilograms of CO2 equivalent from digital waste in a single quarter. This finding emphasizes that a substantial portion of advertising emissions stem from ineffective ads serving no marketing purpose.
Additionally, platforms like IAS (Integral Ad Science) have partnered with Good-Loop to provide free ad emissions measurement integrated directly into their verification platforms. This integration enables advertisers using IAS for brand safety and viewability measurement to simultaneously track campaign carbon emissions. Such integration into existing advertiser workflows represents a critical step toward making emissions measurement routine rather than exceptional.
Beyond proprietary tools, academic and research institutions have developed methodologies and tools for measuring advertising carbon footprint. The eyeo research organization has produced comprehensive sustainability assessments examining the relationship between ad density, ad filtering, and carbon emissions. Scope3’s partnership with Ebiquity PLC resulted in landmark research analyzing 116 billion display ad impressions from 43 brand advertisers across $375 million in ad spend, providing unprecedented benchmarking data on carbon intensity across publishers and placements. Research organizations like Purpose Disruptors have developed the Advertised Emissions framework, which measures not just operational emissions from ad delivery, but also the upstream emissions from the consumption activities that advertising drives.
Data Sources and Calculation Methodologies
The methodologies underlying carbon measurements for digital advertising integrate multiple data sources and calculation approaches. Most comprehensive measurement platforms combine first-party data from advertising platforms with publicly available data from corporate sustainability reports, electricity grid mix information, and academic research on data center efficiency. For instance, Scope3’s model analyzes audit logs from billions of programmatic transactions to determine carbon intensity based on actual supply chain complexity, auction patterns, and delivery metrics.
The calculation of advertising carbon intensity requires assumptions about several variables. Data center efficiency varies substantially based on location, design, and whether facilities utilize renewable energy. The carbon intensity of electricity varies dramatically by geography—data centers powered by renewable energy generate far lower emissions than those powered by coal or natural gas. Video file sizes, creative optimization levels, and the number of intermediaries in the supply chain all influence final emissions calculations. Because these variables interact complexly, measurement methodologies must make transparent assumptions about default values while enabling customization when advertisers have specific knowledge of their supply chains.
Measurement challenges have spurred development of standardized frameworks. The IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Playbook provides guidance on best practices for measuring and reducing programmatic advertising emissions. The Global Media Sustainability Framework (GMSF), developed collaboratively by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Ad Net Zero, establishes consistent data inputs and calculation methodologies across media channels. Version 1.2 of the GMSF includes formulae for all main media channels and detailed data guidance for digital channels, with guidance for remaining channels expected in late 2025. This standardization effort aims to address the significant challenge that different measurement methodologies can yield substantially different results, making it difficult for advertisers to compare carbon intensity across platforms and make informed optimization decisions.
The Role of Ad Blocking and Tracking Prevention in Emissions Reduction
Energy Consumption Reductions from Ad Blocking
Ad blocking and ad filtering technologies represent a significant mechanism for reducing the environmental impact of online advertising, though this benefit is often overlooked. Research demonstrates that using an ad blocker reduces web browsing emissions by an average of 37 percent. More aggressive filtering yields even greater reductions. An eyeo and MAGNA study found that browsing with an ad filter that opts into the Acceptable Ads Standard produces 11.5 times lower carbon emissions compared to high-clutter pages. On multimedia-heavy websites where video ads predominate, the reductions are particularly pronounced. Ad blockers and filtering tools reduce power consumption especially substantially on multimedia-intensive sites by preventing resource-intensive video advertisements from loading.
The mechanics underlying these emission reductions stem directly from the computational requirements of processing advertisements. Advertisements, particularly video ads, require substantial processing power from both the CPU and GPU of viewing devices. Every advertisement that loads requires JavaScript execution, image rendering, video encoding/decoding, tracking pixel firing, and data transmission. By blocking these elements, ad blockers reduce the computational burden on user devices, thereby lowering energy consumption and extending device battery life. On media websites analyzed by independent researchers, removing advertisements reduced customer and network consumption by between 21 and 55 percent, with an average reduction of 37 percent.
Device type influences the magnitude of savings from ad blocking. Mobile devices with battery constraints experience particularly substantial benefits from reduced computational load. Research has consistently found that ad blockers deliver the greatest power savings on mobile devices, where battery efficiency directly translates to user experience and device longevity. In some studies examining mobile web browsing, ad blockers reduced power consumption by up to 50 percent, particularly on multimedia-heavy websites. Built-in ad blockers in browsers like Brave, Librewolf, and Opera prove even more efficient than third-party extensions because they are integrated directly into the browser architecture rather than operating as separate processes consuming additional memory and CPU cycles.
Consumer Adoption and Awareness of Ad Filtering
The environmental benefits of ad blocking are undermined by relatively modest consumer awareness and adoption rates. Research from the Acceptable Ads Committee revealed that while three in five internet users are aware of the environmental impact of online ads, 61 percent significantly underestimate that impact. When informed about the actual carbon cost of online advertising, users dramatically revised their assessments upward, rating the impact as more or significantly more than they had previously believed. This gap between perceived and actual environmental impact suggests substantial potential for increased adoption of ad-filtering technologies if users became better informed.
Ad-blocking adoption has nonetheless grown substantially. According to AdBlock reports, desktop ad-blocker downloads increased from 44 million users in 2012 to 290 million in 2022, while mobile adoption accelerated from 167 million users in 2015 to 530 million in 2022. Younger demographics demonstrate particularly high ad-filtering adoption rates. Approximately 53 percent of Millennials report using ad-filtering software compared to just 6 percent of Baby Boomers. Among those without ad blockers, 95 percent report avoiding interaction with online ads to some extent, and 73 percent find online ads disruptive, frustrating, or incessant.
Notably, ad-filtering users demonstrate significantly greater interest in emissions-reduction initiatives compared to non-filtering users. Research found that 74 percent of ad-blocking users would install an ad blocker if it reduced emissions from online ads, compared to 55 percent of non-ad-blocking users. Ad-blocking users showed 70 percent likelihood of installing extensions that block non-sustainable ads compared to 54 percent of non-blocking users. These figures suggest that once consumers become aware of the environmental dimension of ad blocking, adoption accelerates.
However, awareness of ad blockers’ carbon benefits remains surprisingly low. Only 18 percent of ad-filtering users believe that ad blockers can reduce carbon emissions, despite substantial evidence demonstrating precisely this effect. This awareness gap represents an opportunity—marketing the environmental benefits of ad filtering could substantially accelerate adoption. Additionally, 68 percent of internet users would consider installing an ad blocker if it reduced carbon emissions from online ads, suggesting significant untapped demand for more sustainable ad experiences.
Ad Filtering vs. Ad Blocking: The Middle Path
A crucial distinction exists between comprehensive ad blocking, which removes all advertisements, and ad filtering, which selectively blocks only intrusive or low-quality advertisements while allowing higher-quality, non-disruptive ads to display. This distinction matters both environmentally and economically. The Acceptable Ads Standard defines criteria for advertisements that are brand-safe, non-intrusive, and appropriately formatted, enabling a substantial number of ads to display while still removing the most environmentally harmful and user-disruptive advertisements.
Research demonstrates that ad filtering produces substantial environmental benefits compared to unfiltered browsing while maintaining a meaningful revenue stream for publishers. According to research from eyeo and MAGNA, ad-filtered pages with acceptable ad standards show 11.5 times lower carbon emissions compared to high-clutter pages. Importantly, ads on low-clutter pages received 82 percent lift in aided ad recall and 62 percent lift in unaided ad recall compared to ads on high-clutter pages. Advertisers also observed 9 percent improvement in brand trust on low-clutter pages compared to zero change on cluttered pages. These results demonstrate that reducing ad density through filtering produces environmental benefits while simultaneously improving advertising effectiveness and brand perception—a rare scenario where environmental sustainability aligns with business interests.
The Acceptable Ads Committee has documented that browsing with ad filtering produces 2.4 times less carbon emissions compared to traditional unfiltered browsing. Use of an ad filter produced either the same or less carbon emissions on 92 percent of the websites analyzed. Over 250 million ad-filtering users worldwide have opted into the Acceptable Ads experience, and 60 of Comscore’s Top 100 publishers monetize their ad-blocking audiences according to the Acceptable Ads Standard. This scale suggests that ad filtering represents a practical, deployable approach to achieving significant emissions reductions while preserving publisher revenue models and enabling user choice regarding their advertising experiences.
Industry Initiatives and Measurement Frameworks
The Sustainability Playbook and Best Practices
Recognizing the need for coordinated action toward sustainable advertising, the IAB Tech Lab published the Sustainability Playbook in June 2023, developed by the IAB Tech Lab’s Sustainability Working Group. This comprehensive guide outlines actionable best practices for reducing carbon emissions in programmatic advertising, providing guidance to both buyers and sellers within the programmatic supply chain. The playbook emphasizes that reducing carbon in programmatic ad tech fundamentally requires reducing the amount of requests and data processed by the advertising technology ecosystem.
For publishers and supply-side platform operators, the Sustainability Playbook recommends several specific optimizations. These include implementing Global Placement IDs (gpid) to uniquely identify each ad slot on a page, enabling buyers to distinguish unique ad requests from duplicates and thereby avoid redundant bidding. The playbook recommends using preferred paths by selecting a single preferred integration path per exchange and avoiding multiple paths to the same exchange that create redundant bid requests. Additionally, publishers should implement the Ad Management API to prevent DSPs from bidding on inventory that will never win due to non-approved or denied creatives according to exchange policy.
For advertisers and demand-side platforms, the playbook recommends reducing duplicate bidding on requests using gpid, limiting the purchase of multi-hop impressions, supporting pod bidding to group multiple impressions into a single bid request, and leveraging interoperable IDs where possible. These recommendations target the core inefficiency driving unnecessary emissions: redundant auction processes that consume computational resources without adding value. By streamlining auction dynamics and supply paths, the industry can dramatically reduce the energy consumed in matching advertisers with placements without sacrificing campaign performance or reach.
The Global Media Sustainability Framework
The Global Media Sustainability Framework (GMSF) represents perhaps the most significant recent initiative toward standardizing carbon measurement across advertising. Developed through collaboration between the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Ad Net Zero community, the GMSF establishes consistent methodologies for measuring carbon across six major media types. The framework’s goal is enabling every advertiser and their partners to understand and take positive action to reduce the carbon impact of their media plans.
The GMSF addresses a critical challenge: different measurement methodologies can yield substantially different carbon assessments for identical campaigns, making it difficult for advertisers to compare sustainability across platforms and make optimized decisions. By establishing consistent data inputs and calculation formulas, the GMSF enables fair comparison and benchmarking. Version 1.2 includes comprehensive formulae for all main media channels and detailed data guidance for digital channels, with guidance for remaining channels expected in late 2025. This approach recognizes that different media channels—display, video, social, digital out-of-home, direct mail, and others—have distinct emission profiles and require tailored measurement methodologies.
Importantly, the GMSF integrates with existing advertiser workflows and key performance indicators. Rather than treating sustainability as a separate measurement track, the framework embeds carbon measurement into standard media planning and buying processes. This integration proves critical for driving adoption—if sustainability measurement requires entirely separate workflows and systems, adoption remains limited to highly motivated early adopters. By incorporating emissions measurement into standard KPI tracking alongside performance metrics like reach, frequency, and conversion, the GMSF positions sustainability as a standard business concern rather than a niche environmental initiative.
Ad Net Zero Action Plan and Emissions Reduction Pathways
The Ad Net Zero Action Plan provides a comprehensive five-point framework for decarbonizing the advertising industry. Action 1 focuses on reducing emissions across business operations, calling for agencies and marketing services companies to annually measure carbon emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3—encompassing facilities electricity usage, business travel, data centers, and waste management. Action 2 targets reducing emissions from advertising production, addressing the upstream creative development phase. Action 3 concentrates on reducing emissions from media planning and buying, the phase where optimization efforts can yield the greatest aggregate reductions.
Actions 4 and 5 expand beyond direct advertising operations. Action 4 challenges industry awards bodies and event organizers to incorporate sustainability considerations into award criteria and event planning. Leading award shows like Cannes Lions and D&AD have begun including sustainability questions in award entries, raising industry visibility regarding the environmental dimension of creative excellence. Action 5 leverages advertising’s cultural influence and creative power to drive sustainable behaviors across the broader economy. This action recognizes that advertising shapes consumer demand and behaviors—if the industry collectively promoted sustainable consumption patterns, it could amplify positive environmental impact far beyond the industry’s own operational emissions.
Importantly, the Ad Net Zero Action Plan recognizes that achieving net-zero emissions requires complementary actions. Operational emissions reduction and production emissions reduction must proceed in parallel with media planning optimization. Furthermore, the framework acknowledges that without behavioral change driven through advertising messages themselves, reductions achieved through operational efficiency will prove insufficient to meet global climate targets. The comprehensive framework positions advertising industry decarbonization as a strategic business imperative rather than merely a compliance burden.
Challenges in Measurement and Standardization
Technical and Methodological Barriers
Despite substantial progress in measurement methodologies, significant technical barriers complicate accurate and consistent carbon footprint assessment across digital advertising. The primary challenge stems from the complexity and opacity of the programmatic advertising supply chain. Advertisers often lack complete visibility into their supply paths, making it difficult to attribute carbon emissions accurately to specific decisions and placements. Data collection across distributed systems—spanning DSPs, SSPs, ad exchanges, and publishers—requires integration of information from multiple proprietary platforms with different data structures and collection methodologies.
Measuring data center carbon intensity presents particular technical challenges. Data centers vary substantially in efficiency based on facility design, cooling systems, server equipment, and power sourcing. Additionally, within multi-tenant data centers, accurately allocating emissions to specific advertising operations versus other digital services proves difficult. The electricity grid mix powering data centers varies significantly by geography and time, with renewable energy penetration in some regions dramatically reducing emissions per unit of electricity consumed relative to coal-dependent grids. Dynamic electricity grids that vary their renewable energy proportion throughout the day create temporal variations in emission intensity that measurement systems must accommodate.
Equipment efficiency levels vary substantially, with older servers consuming far more electricity per computation than modern, optimized systems. Workloads dynamically vary, creating challenges in attributing energy consumption to specific activities. Furthermore, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence accelerators promise substantial efficiency gains but introduce new measurement complexities. Without standardized methodologies for handling these variables, different measurement platforms produce substantially different results for identical advertising activities. This inconsistency undermines confidence in measurement and creates perverse incentives where advertisers can shop for measurement methodologies yielding favorable results rather than employing standardized approaches enabling objective comparison.
Economic Constraints and Implementation Barriers
Beyond technical challenges, economic constraints significantly impede emissions reduction efforts. Implementing energy-efficient technologies and renewable energy sources requires substantial upfront financial investments. Data center operators, particularly smaller organizations and those in developing markets with lower electricity costs, face economic barriers to adopting sustainable technologies. When fossil fuel electricity costs far less than renewable energy in a given region, the economic incentive to decarbonize diminishes. Furthermore, shifting advertising supply chains toward more sustainable paths may increase costs for advertisers if premium publishers and efficient supply routes command higher CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) than lower-quality, high-waste placements.
These economic constraints have created perverse incentives favoring wasteful practices. The programmatic advertising model rewards cost minimization on a per-impression basis without accounting for waste or environmental impact. Advertisers optimizing solely on cost-per-acquisition metrics often select the cheapest inventory, which frequently comes from inefficient, wasteful supply paths. MFA sites can offer impressions at dramatically reduced rates because they capture large volumes of engaged users, however briefly, at minimal cost. The structure of the industry creates powerful incentives to buy cheap inventory without regard for environmental consequences or advertising effectiveness.
Organizations committed to sustainability improvements must navigate trade-offs between cost and environmental impact. Some large enterprises have chosen to invest in sustainable media plans despite premium pricing, viewing this as a strategic commitment to corporate environmental goals. However, cost pressures on smaller organizations and performance-focused campaigns limit broader adoption. Regulatory frameworks and policy mechanisms will likely prove necessary to overcome these economic barriers and align individual cost incentives with collective environmental objectives.
Regulatory and Policy Gaps
Despite growing urgency around advertising emissions, substantial gaps persist in regulatory frameworks and policy mechanisms addressing the issue. The lack of consistent regulatory requirements for emissions measurement and disclosure enables inconsistency and greenwashing. Some companies make sustainability claims unsupported by credible measurement, undermining trust in legitimate sustainability initiatives. Without clear regulatory guidelines, data center operators and advertising platforms have insufficient incentive to proactively address carbon footprints, particularly when investment in efficiency reduces short-term profitability.
The absence of mandatory carbon reporting standards means that many organizations remain unaware of their advertising emissions and lack systematic processes for measuring and reducing them. While voluntary frameworks like the Global Media Sustainability Framework and Ad Net Zero Action Plan provide guidance, only committed early adopters participate. Broader adoption requires regulatory mandates and enforcement mechanisms. Additionally, policies affecting electricity grid decarbonization substantially influence advertising carbon intensity. Jurisdictions transitioning toward renewable electricity dramatically reduce the carbon intensity of data centers located within their borders. Policy interventions including renewable energy subsidies, carbon pricing mechanisms, and renewable energy procurement mandates all influence the trajectory of advertising emissions.
Practical Solutions and Reduction Strategies
Content Optimization and Lightweight Ads
One of the most directly actionable approaches to reducing advertising carbon emissions involves optimizing ad creative to minimize file sizes and computational requirements. The IAB Tech Lab published Lightweight Ads Guidance emphasizing the LEAN principles of advertising: Light, Encrypted, AdChoices supported, and Non-invasive. Lightweight ad specifications establish file size limits and technical requirements designed to maximize initial page load performance while maintaining ad effectiveness.
Practical optimization approaches include using compressed image formats such as WebP instead of PNG or JPEG, reducing resolution on images to necessary minimum levels, and eliminating unnecessary visual elements. For video advertising, file size reduction through improved compression algorithms can substantially lower energy consumption. Researchers at IMPACT+ found that optimizing asset weight reduced campaign emissions by an average of 30 percent. Additionally, eliminating auto-playing video represents a significant optimization opportunity. Auto-playing videos consume energy continuously whether or not users intend to view the advertisement, creating pure waste. Converting auto-play videos to user-initiated formats eliminates this unnecessary consumption while often improving user experience by reducing page disruption.
Ad design and format optimization can significantly impact emissions. Static advertisements consume substantially less energy than animated or video-based advertisements occupying equivalent space. When video advertising is necessary, converting video to shorter formats and lower frame rates reduces energy consumption. Research demonstrates that animation and motion effects, while visually engaging, dramatically increase computational requirements. By deliberately constraining animation complexity, advertisers reduce both energy consumption and visual distraction, often resulting in improved user experience alongside environmental benefits.
Supply Path Optimization and Curation Strategies
Supply Path Optimization (SPO) represents a systematic approach to streamlining the programmatic supply chain to reduce waste, cost, and environmental impact. SPO involves scrutinizing the intermediaries between advertisers and publishers, eliminating parties that do not add value, and consolidating multiple paths to the same supply sources. By reducing the number of hops required for an impression to travel from advertiser to publisher, SPO directly reduces the computational requirements and energy consumption associated with each impression.
Practically implementing SPO requires systematically analyzing supply path performance using detailed reporting from demand-side platforms. Advertisers should identify which SSPs, exchanges, and sellers consistently deliver strong performance, extract detailed reports analyzing impressions, conversions, cost per acquisition, click-through rates, and costs associated with each supply path, and identify trends indicating which paths perform optimally under various campaign conditions. Based on this analysis, advertisers can curate their supply lists, creating allow and block lists that funnel inventory purchases toward high-performing, efficient paths while eliminating wasteful intermediaries.
Working with premium publishers through private marketplaces (PMPs) rather than open exchanges represents another form of SPO. Private marketplace deals reduce the number of intermediaries and competing demand sources, streamlining the supply path while often improving inventory quality and transparency. Research has demonstrated that moving 5 percent of impressions to lower-carbon supply paths can produce 28 percent reduction in total campaign carbon emissions while simultaneously increasing impressions by 18 percent. These remarkable results underscore that optimizing for sustainability often aligns with improved campaign performance and efficiency.
Platform and Infrastructure Transitions
Selecting advertising platforms and infrastructure powered by renewable energy directly reduces campaign carbon footprint. Some major internet platforms have made commitments to powering data centers with renewable energy. Google, for example, has committed to operating its data centers on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. This commitment makes Google Ads and Google-powered advertising platforms more sustainable choices compared to competing platforms powered by conventional electricity sources.
Content delivery networks (CDNs) and cloud services vary substantially in their renewable energy adoption and efficiency practices. Advertisers and agencies should evaluate the environmental policies and practices of their technical partners as part of procurement decisions. This evaluation extends beyond advertising platforms to encompass web hosting providers for landing pages, where optimization opportunities parallel those in ad creative. Faster-loading landing pages with streamlined code and hosted on renewable energy infrastructure reduce the cumulative environmental impact of advertising campaigns.
Data storage and processing efficiency in customer data platforms (CDPs), data management platforms (DMPs), and analytics systems all influence aggregate campaign carbon footprint. Moving away from resource-intensive modeling-based approaches toward contextual targeting methods reduces data collection, processing, and storage requirements. Contextual targeting, which determines ad relevance based on page context rather than individual user tracking, proves increasingly important as third-party cookies deprecate. This targeting method reduces data transfer, storage, and processing relative to behavioral targeting approaches requiring extensive historical user data.
Reducing Tracking and Third-Party Data Dependencies
The collection and processing of user data for behavioral targeting represents a substantial driver of advertising emissions. Each user tracking event requires data collection, transmission, and storage. Cookie syncing—the process of sharing user identifiers across multiple data partners—multiplies data transfer and processing for each user impression. Research examining cookie syncing has revealed that the practice generates unnecessary redundancy and waste, with substantial environmental consequences.
Reducing unnecessary tracking, minimizing third-party cookie usage, and focusing on first-party data strategies can meaningfully lower campaign emissions. Strategies include eliminating redundant tracking pixels, consolidating data collection through primary measurement partners rather than maintaining duplicative tracking from multiple vendors, and reducing the frequency of data synchronization processes. These reductions simultaneously improve privacy, accelerate page load times, and reduce environmental impact—creating alignment across multiple objectives.
Privacy-first approaches including contextual targeting and interest-based segmentation models that operate on aggregated data rather than individual-level tracking data reduce computational requirements. Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative and similar industry efforts to move toward privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies incorporate sustainability considerations alongside privacy motivations. By transitioning toward architectural approaches requiring less data collection and storage, the industry can simultaneously advance privacy, security, and environmental sustainability objectives.
Consumer Awareness and Future Demand
Public Consciousness of Advertising Emissions
Consumer awareness of advertising’s environmental impact remains substantially below the actual scale of the problem. Research from the Acceptable Ads Committee found that approximately 47 percent of internet users have some awareness of the environmental impact of online ads, with only 12 percent reporting high awareness. When presented with actual data on advertising emissions, the majority of users significantly revise their estimates upward, acknowledging greater impact than they had previously recognized. This gap between perceived and actual impact suggests substantial opportunity for increased awareness and corresponding behavioral change.
However, awareness remains unevenly distributed. Ad-blocking users demonstrate significantly higher awareness of environmental issues generally and of advertising’s environmental impact specifically compared to non-blocking users. This correlation suggests that environmental consciousness and action orientation drive ad-blocker adoption, rather than ad-blocker adoption creating environmental awareness. Notably, users who have never installed ad blockers nonetheless express environmental concern—73 percent of non-blocking users feel online ads are disruptive and incessant, and 63 percent want to control the types of ads they see. This disconnect between expressed concern and behavioral adoption suggests that barriers beyond environmental motivation prevent broader ad-filtering adoption.
When environmental impact of online ads is specifically mentioned, adoption intent increases dramatically. Research found that 68 percent of internet users would consider installing an ad blocker if it reduced carbon emissions from online ads. This represents substantially higher adoption intent than current usage rates, indicating significant untapped demand for more sustainable advertising experiences. However, awareness of ad blockers’ actual environmental benefits remains surprisingly low at 18 percent of ad-filtering users. This awareness gap presents a critical opportunity for messaging and education campaigns to accelerate adoption of sustainable ad-filtering technologies.
User Preferences for Sustainable Advertising Initiatives
Research exploring desired approaches to reducing advertising emissions reveals strong user preference for technology-based solutions and transparent governance. When asked to rate the helpfulness of various emissions-reduction initiatives, three in five internet users rated technology-based interventions as very or extremely helpful. Specifically, 62 percent rated very or extremely helpful technology enabling users to block high carbon-emitting ads, followed by technology blocking tracking and ad tech generating carbon emissions at 59 percent.
Beyond technology solutions, users expressed support for brand commitments to sustainable practices and independent governance. When asked about brand initiatives, 54 percent rated as very or extremely helpful brands committing to work exclusively with carbon-friendly websites and display only low-carbon ads. Additionally, 84 percent of users believe an independent governing body establishing and enforcing sustainable advertising standards would help reduce emissions. This overwhelming support for independent governance structures suggests that users recognize the limitations of voluntary industry self-regulation and desire credible third-party oversight.
Notably, two-thirds of internet users report willingness to take action to reduce the environmental impact of online advertising they experience. This expressed willingness indicates substantial demand for tools and information enabling individual behavior change. Users express interest in receiving information on website carbon footprints, supporting NGOs monitoring brand environmental impact of ads, and paying for carbon measurement tools. This heterogeneous mix of preferences suggests that effective solutions will require complementary approaches including technical tools, transparency mechanisms, certification systems, and consumer empowerment approaches.
Future Trajectory and Regulatory Evolution
The trajectory of consumer awareness and regulatory attention suggests that advertising emissions will increasingly become mainstream business concerns rather than niche environmental issues. Growing transparency about advertising carbon impacts will drive consumer pressure on brands and publishers. Several major advertisers and agencies have publicly committed to reducing advertising carbon emissions, positioning sustainability as a competitive differentiator. As early adopters demonstrate business and environmental benefits of optimization, industry-wide adoption will accelerate.
Regulatory developments will likely accelerate this trajectory. The European Union’s Green Deal, aiming to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, creates policy frameworks supporting decarbonization across digital sectors. If the European Union or other major jurisdictions mandate corporate carbon reporting including supply chain emissions, advertising agencies and media platforms will face regulatory pressure to measure and reduce emissions from their operations and recommendations to clients. Carbon pricing mechanisms, including carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems, create direct financial incentives for organizations to reduce emissions once carbon costs are internalized.
The industry itself recognizes the urgency. Nine out of ten U.S. marketers agree that the advertising industry has responsibility to reduce carbon footprint, and 76 percent believe the industry needs to do more. This industry consensus, while currently insufficient to drive universal change, provides foundation for coordinated action. Industry associations including the IAB, WFA, and Ad Net Zero have invested substantial resources in developing measurement standards, best practice frameworks, and change initiatives. Continued maturation of these frameworks will support broader adoption.
The integration of emissions measurement into standard business workflows represents a critical evolution enabling accelerated progress. When carbon metrics become routine components of campaign reporting alongside performance metrics, sustainability optimization becomes systematic rather than exceptional. As emissions data becomes granular and accessible to advertisers through standard platforms and interfaces, optimization opportunities become actionable rather than requiring specialized expertise.
From Carbon Cost to Climate Action
The carbon footprint of digital advertising represents one of contemporary capitalism’s most significant environmental challenges that remains invisible to both general consumers and many industry participants. At 7.2 million metric tons of CO2 annually—potentially expanding to 2-3.5 percent of global carbon emissions by 2025—advertising’s environmental impact rivals entire transportation sectors and exceeds most national carbon footprints. Yet this emissions profile receives a fraction of the regulatory attention and public scrutiny directed toward industries recognized as carbon-intensive.
Measurement represents the critical prerequisite for meaningful reduction. The emergence of standardized metrics including gCO2PM, comprehensive measurement platforms like Scope3 and Good-Loop, and collaborative frameworks including the Global Media Sustainability Framework have established technical capacity to quantify advertising emissions with reasonable accuracy. These measurement systems have progressed from recognizing that advertising generates emissions to enabling granular attribution of emissions to specific supply paths, creative formats, and optimization opportunities. Critically, research has demonstrated that optimization toward lower-carbon outcomes typically correlates with improved campaign performance and cost efficiency, creating alignment between environmental sustainability and business objectives.
Ad blocking and traffic filtering technologies demonstrate immediate capacity to reduce advertising emissions by 37 percent on average, with reductions exceeding 70 percent on multimedia-heavy sites. The emergence of ad-filtering approaches respecting the Acceptable Ads Standard enables environmental improvement while maintaining publisher revenue and enabling advertiser reach. The 250 million global users of ad-filtering software represent both existing constituency for sustainable advertising and potential platform for accelerated adoption if environmental benefits receive better communication.
Practical optimization strategies spanning content optimization, supply path streamlining, platform selection, and tracking reduction have been well-documented and demonstrated to produce substantial emissions reductions. Single-digit percentage improvements in efficiency often yield 25-60 percent reductions in campaign carbon intensity. These improvements prove achievable through deliberate optimization without requiring fundamental restructuring of advertising systems or elimination of advertising as business model.
Yet substantial barriers persist impeding industry-wide adoption. Technical complexity of programmatic supply chains creates measurement challenges and opacity preventing systematic optimization. Economic incentives favor cost minimization and waste-generating practices over sustainability optimization. Regulatory gaps allow voluntary approaches insufficient for achieving necessary reductions. Consumer awareness, while growing, remains substantially below the actual scale of advertising’s environmental impact. These barriers interact complexly, creating inertia against change despite universal recognition of problem severity.
Addressing this challenge requires coordinated action across multiple dimensions. Industry standardization of measurement methodologies must continue advancing to eliminate greenwashing risks and enable objective optimization. Platforms and ad tech companies should incorporate emissions measurement and optimization directly into standard advertiser dashboards and workflows, eliminating friction and complexity in accessing emissions data. Regulatory frameworks should establish mandatory carbon reporting requirements for advertising operations and media planning recommendations, creating universal accountability. Consumer education campaigns should raise awareness of advertising emissions and available reduction tools including ad filtering technologies. Independent governance structures should establish and enforce standards for sustainable advertising, providing third-party credibility and overcoming trust deficits in industry self-regulation.
For advertisers, reducing the carbon footprint of media campaigns must become standard practice embedded within media planning processes. The simultaneous improvements in campaign performance and cost efficiency achievable through carbon optimization create compelling business case for prioritization. For publishers, quality-focused revenue models emphasizing fewer, higher-quality advertisements prove simultaneously more sustainable and more effective than high-density, low-value placements. For platforms and technology companies, investments in renewable energy powering data centers and efficiency improvements in ad delivery systems represent competitive differentiators while advancing climate objectives. For consumers, adoption of ad-filtering technologies represents immediately available action reducing both the advertising disruption they experience and their environmental impact from web browsing.
The path forward requires recognizing that decarbonizing digital advertising is neither impossibly difficult nor prohibitively expensive. Measurement systems exist. Optimization opportunities have been identified and demonstrated. Economic models enabling profitability alongside sustainability have been proven. The challenge is mobilizing industry, regulatory, and consumer action at sufficient scale. As climate urgency intensifies and consumer consciousness expands, competitive advantages will increasingly accrue to organizations leading rather than resisting this transition. The advertising industry has opportunity to demonstrate that substantial environmental improvement is achievable while maintaining business value—a demonstration with profound implications for other sectors facing climate imperatives.
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