“Hey Charles, need to find a new day to meet. I’m going to the ad carbon footprint conference in Philly.” That was from a lady I know at an ad agency in New York. Ad carbon footprint. Not sure if I should say it or question it. As a recycling Luddite who can’t distinguish nuanced plastics, I was at a bit of a loss. Do ads produce carbon waste? Does Amazon buy a nuclear reactor in the Pennsylvania woodlands?
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Showing one million ads emits 70 tons of CO2 equivalent. For the uninitiated, that’s as much as seven people living for one year. Or, a round trip flight from Boston to London. I may not know a CO2 from an R2D2, but I know a million ads in nothing.
A person over the age of eighteen sees 347 banner ads per day. That’s a smidge over 125,000 ads per year.
Even my uncaring-about-the-environment head started to spin. How do we rack up that kind of pollution showing digital ads? How does this compare to printing — PRINTING — millions of pages of ads in a pre-digital era?
Is it CPUs running hot from running optimization algorithms and processing loads of supply- and demand-side matching auctions? Does the environmental cost come from having to power and cool those machines?
My mind, as yours probably has, jumped to how much carbon our digital lives emit. Think about it. If an ad generates gobs of carbon, how much carbon does a whole story spew? It takes a building full of computers to decide which ad to show me. There’s one ad for every ten Facebook posts, how many buildings does Facebook need?
It was more than my feeble mind could consider so I set it aside.
Until… a few days ago when Amazon bought a nuclear reactor to power their next data center in ways that emit few carbons. And, not just any nuclear plant. The sixth largest one in the U.S.. And, not just to keep it running. They’re going to increase power output by 10x. I know you’re thinking this is just me pulling your leg. Nope.
To Amazon, $650M may be a drop of heavy water in a fusion dampening bucket but it’s still a number so big that it got me to look into how we calculate ad carbons.
It turns out ad carbon footprint has nearly nothing to do with ads. Ad carbon footprint includes everything a company does to house, feed, and transport all their employees along with all the employees that work for all companies in the supply chain. Lighting a building. Ad carbon footprint. Heating that building? Ad carbon footprint. The gas, electricity, hydrogen or nuclear fission you used to get to work? You guess it, ad carbon footprint.
Ads aren’t just about the people who make, sell, or buy ads. They are all the people in the murky ad supply chain. If Google places or tracks an ad, you have to count Google people. Add ad tech people too. If you need Dr. Augustine Fou to opine about ad quality, you’re going to need to include the power used to get his Japanese whisky to his Whisky Wednesday gatherings. Yes, that counts.
70% of carbon emissions are for the people, offices, and vehicles for companies outside the ad agency. Up to 90% of that is business travel.
Turns out if we want to reduce the ad carbon footprint, the people who buy ads at agencies in New York need to stop: taking trains to Philly, staying at hotel with lights and air conditioning, and stop grazzing at buffets put on by ad carbon footprint event organizers.