By Anton Ruin, CEO of Epom. Epom were winners of the ‘Best SaaS Product for Media & Publishing’ category at The 2024 SaaS Awards.

There’s no secret: today, customers care about a brand image like they do about products.

They want to buy from sustainable businesses and are willing to punish companies that don’t try to reduce their footprint. Traditional advertising has been known to cause significant amounts of waste; hence, digital advertising is expected to improve the situation. And indeed, a programmatic approach can help with that. Let’s explore how programmatic advertising makes ad delivery faster and more efficient and drives sustainability for all parties involved.

Traditional Advertising vs. Sustainability

Much used for decades, traditional channels, such as TV, print, or radio, weren’t very efficient from today’s perspective and involved vast amounts of waste. For example, producing print ads requires lots of materials and leads to increased carbon emissions, high energy consumption, and physical waste.

Also, traditional advertising’s targeting was way too broad, which resulted in overexposure. People repeatedly saw irrelevant ads, and companies spent their marketing budgets in vain. Financial resources were getting wasted, much like material ones.

The rise of digital advertising was to put it to an end. At least, that’s what we hoped. In reality, as research shows, over 56% of ad impressions are never seen by consumers, and 60% of digital marketing spendings are wasted.

So, the problem is still here, and it’s twofold. On the one hand, the budgets are still not allocated efficiently enough. On the other hand, customers are becoming increasingly curious about sustainable advertising and want to know if companies deliver their ads appropriately.

Do Customers Really Care About Waste?

It may come as a surprise, but they really do. In a global study by Microsoft Advertising and Dentsu International, 24,000 people from 19 countries participated.

It turned out that 61% of respondents perceived experiencing an ad as harmful to the planet. The numbers varied depending on the generation. For example, only 45% of boomers agreed that consuming ads is bad for the environment, compared with 71% of Gen Z and 73% of Gen Y (millennials).

Moreover, across 19 markets, 77% of respondents say that in five years, they will only spend money on brands that practice sustainable advertising. The conclusion is clear: there’s no other way for companies but to embrace this approach.

How Programmatic Advertising Helps Fight Waste

Since the very beginning, programmatic advertising has revolutionized how ads are sold, bought, and delivered to the audience. Companies can significantly increase campaign effectiveness and cost efficiency thanks to modern technologies, such as machine learning and real-time bidding. The programmatic approach allows the automation of media buying through several types of platforms:

• Demand-side platforms (DSPs) help advertisers to buy ad inventory
• Supply-side platforms (SSPs) allow publishers to sell ad space
• Ad exchanges are marketplaces where real-time auctions for ad inventory happen

As programmatic advertising spread, its benefits in reducing waste and inefficiency became clear:

• It drastically reduces paper waste and lowers energy consumption. 
• Due to advanced targeting options, ads are more likely to be shown to the relevant audience. This reduces the number of wasted impressions and increases ad performance. Less waste equals better results. Moreover, real-time optimization allows advertisers to monitor performance data and reallocate budgets from underdogs to top-dogs in ads.
• Programmatic advertising helps automate most tasks associated with ad buying and running campaigns. It means less room for human error and, hence, a lower probability of wasting resources, physical or financial.

Okay, but what about 60% of the average ad budget being wasted? Can companies lower this number to make their campaigns more sustainable? Sure, they can, and they should.

What Can We Do to Improve?

In 2022, Toyota achieved great success in sustainable advertising. The company decided to implement SeenThis’ adaptive video streaming technology that aims to increase ad loading time and lower the amount of data used. This step resulted in an overwhelming 20% decrease in carbon emissions.

Here are some other things companies can do to become more sustainable in their advertising efforts:

1. Try online carbon calculators to track your campaign’s environmental impact. Typically, they calculate carbon emissions based on the ad size, number of impressions, and geographic location. This will give you a starting point and kickstart your sustainability actions.
2. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Look thoroughly at your data flow. Are there unnecessary elements? It’s simple math: if your data goes through multiple vendors and partners, it causes higher energy consumption. So, it’s time to examine your processes and software. Maybe it’s time to choose an ad server that can streamline operations and reduce ad waste. Advertisers may consider implementing a white-label solution that can be tailored to their specific needs. It prevents wasting ad budgets on irrelevant impressions and saves money on using multiple platforms or building your own SSP from scratch. For example, Epom adtech solutions saved customers $3,054,200 between 2021 and 2023.
3. Recycle. We do it in our offices with plastic, paper, and glass. Why not reuse the pieces of content? Every photo or video shoot means additional tons of carbon dioxide, especially if it requires traveling. So, you can reduce your negative environmental impact by filming locally and using the content several times.
4. Measure the size of your ads. You can lower your carbon footprint by slightly reducing the size of your banners. For instance, you can choose more savvy file formats, such as SVG, or shorten your videos. Also, lowering resolution can lead to much lower carbon emissions and higher loading speed without hurting your brand.
5. Choose your campaign goals wisely. After all, it’s not about quantity but quality. So, it makes sense to pay more attention to advanced targeting and focus less on the number of impressions as a single performance indicator.
6. Find out more about publishers. Some websites generate more carbon emissions than others, for instance, due to inefficient technological practices. Therefore, you may want to check the publishers delivering your ads.

Final Thoughts

Programmatic advertising appeared as a rescue from the inefficiencies of the pre-digital era. And although it’s not perfect yet, it’s a highly dynamic field. 

Technologies like AI-driven optimization tools will keep evolving and move us closer to sustainable advertising. But we shouldn’t just wait for a bright future – we should embrace opportunities that programmatic advertising represents and use them to make our businesses safer for the environment.