GroupM and SeenThis avoid over 230 tonnes of carbon emissions in first year of global partnership

GroupM’s carbon calculator now includes SeenThis technology following partnership launch last year, so far avoiding carbon emissions equivalent to charging over 15m smartphones

GroupM, WPP’s media investment group, today announced that it has now fully integrated SeenThis’ adaptive streaming technology into its carbon calculator tool. The collaboration, which began in 2023, has enabled GroupM and its agencies to leverage SeenThis’ expertise and proprietary technology to manage and minimize carbon emissions while improving the performance of display advertising campaigns.

In the last year, the global partnership has helped to avoid over 230 tonnes of CO₂e emissions¹, the equivalent of charging more than 15 million smartphones. Around 260 GroupM advertisers across 28 markets have benefitted from their access to the technology, whilst simultaneously driving the improved performance of their digital ads. By reducing data waste, where data is only transferred for creative assets that are visible, SeenThis technology helps to increase the attention of the user meaning fewer impressions are required to meet targets. It also minimizes CO₂e emissions, as each part of the internet supply chain requires energy to operate.

Using SeenThis technology, a recent campaign for UOB, a leading bank in Asia, was able to reduce data consumption by 25% and increase the view-through rate by 245%, a testament to the effectiveness of precision targeting and performance optimization efforts.

The proprietary technology has been seamlessly integrated into GroupM’s carbon calculator, allowing all GroupM advertisers to assess the optimisation impact when using SeenThis in pre-campaign planning. This demonstrates GroupM’s ability to turn trials into repeatable successes and create scalable processes. Growing industry interest and the desire for a common measuring framework are also helping to drive this. The focus in the near term is to convert successful trials and tests into always-on components of campaigns, as this technology has proven to drive meaningful business outcomes whilst reducing carbon intensity.

“In 2023 we set out in partnership with SeenThis to minimize emissions using data from our partners. One year on, we are achieving what we said we would do, building on our global framework for media decarbonization. The success of this partnership marks an important step in our commitment to decarbonize our media supply chain, and the more advertisers opt into SeenThis, the more they can drive positive results across both emissions and performance,” said Kieley Taylor, Global Head of Partnerships at GroupM.

“Our partnership is one of the first examples of a vendor providing an immediate turn-key solution to enable GroupM to deliver CO₂e reductions while enhancing the user experience. We’re thrilled that GroupM is focused on the combination of minimizing emissions while maximizing performance, and is embracing the use of SeenThis data to share this insight with their advertisers to encourage lower carbon cost of business outcomes,” said Thomas Bowens, Global Agency Director at SeenThis.

¹ Emissions estimates calculated by GroupM with a total footprint of 320.48 mtCO₂e and avoided emissions based on 3,636,139 GB avoided data waste compared to conventional download technology.

Source: SeenThis

  Agency, Carbon Emissions, Collaboration, Global Partnership, GroupM, partnership, SeenThis, Sustainability, WPP