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Carbon Direct > Case Studies > Scope3's Innovative Approach to Decarbonize the Digital Advertising Industry
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Scope3's Innovative Approach to Decarbonize the Digital Advertising Industry

Technology Category
  • Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries
  • Cement
Applicable Functions
  • Procurement
  • Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
  • Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems
  • Last Mile Delivery
Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
The digital advertising industry, which represents over 50% of U.S. ad budgets and is nearing $200B in 2022, has a significant carbon footprint. Nearly 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, or 1.6 billion metric tons, are caused by the internet and its supporting systems, with digital advertising contributing a significant portion. The industry uses thousands of servers that bid to fill ad space in real-time, decide which ads to serve with machine learning, and load creative and publisher content, using significant amounts of energy. Scope3, a company founded to make digital advertising sustainable, needed to find an economic incentive for companies to reduce their emissions.
About The Customer
Scope3 is a company on a mission to decarbonize the digital advertising industry. They aim to deliver an accurate, comprehensive, and independent emissions model for any company in the ecosystem. By enabling the industry-wide usage of Green Media Products (GMPs), or carbon-neutral media, Scope3 helps advertisers, publishers, and ad tech partners measure emissions and manage the purchase of high-quality carbon removal projects. The company was founded by a team of experts in digital advertising and has developed a methodology that measures end-to-end emissions of an ad’s delivery across the digital supply chain.
The Solution
Scope3 developed a methodology that measures end-to-end emissions of an ad’s delivery across the digital supply chain. They introduced Green Media Products (GMPs), or carbon-neutral media, to help advertisers, publishers, and ad tech partners measure emissions and manage the purchase of high-quality carbon removal projects. Scope3's approach to GMPs is threefold: quantify ad emissions, include the price of offsetting those emissions in the real cost of digital advertising, and create a direct path to carbon removal purchasing and incentivize emission reduction. They selected Carbon Direct to embed carbon compensation into their GMPs with a bespoke carbon removal portfolio. Advertisers can automatically compensate for emissions from their advertising campaigns by purchasing a GMP.
Operational Impact
  • Scope3's solution has far-reaching sustainable implications across the advertising ecosystem, serving brands, agencies, publishers, supply-side platforms, demand-side platforms, and more. In a partnership with Vox Media, Green Media was made available across the entire Concert Marketplace, giving brands the opportunity to purchase carbon-neutral media at scale across dozens of premium publishers. Scope3 continues to onboard clients to buy and sell green media and educate the industry on the real carbon cost of digital advertising. Looking ahead, Scope3 plans to evolve their current GMP offering to build emissions reduction into their GMPs and automate carbon removal purchasing with Carbon Direct’s API when compensation for unavoidable emissions is needed.
Quantitative Benefit
  • $1M advance purchase of high-quality carbon credits through a bespoke portfolio
  • Integration of carbon removal purchasing with Green Media Products (GMPs)
  • Compensation for 600+ metric tons of CO2 as of January 2023

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