SeenThis updates Emissions Dashboard

The adaptive streaming firm aligns methodology for assessing carbon emissions from digital advertising

Adaptive streaming specialist SeenThis has relaunched its Emissions Dashboard, which enables advertisers to assess the carbon footprint for creative delivery of their digital marketing campaigns.

The Dashboard measures the amount of data transferred per impression and several other granular data points, allowing the quantification of total emissions for creative delivery, with grammes of CO₂e emitted per thousand impressions (gPM), and, through the added layer of performance, carbon cost of outcomes.

The updated version of the Dashboard will use methodology developed by French interprofessional organisation SRI (Syndicat des Régies Internet) and the French arm of the IAB, Alliance Digitale.

SeenThis developed its own methodology for assessing emissions from creative delivery of digital marketing campaigns in 2021. Since then, many other methodologies have been developed, including that of SRI and Alliance Digitale (SRIxAD). Much like the methodology developed by SeenThis, the SRIxAD framework considers direct energy consumption and embodied emissions across the life cycle of an ad, including from data centres, ad serving and user devices, to provide a detailed assessment of a campaign’s carbon footprint.

SeenThis is aligning behind the SRIxAD methodology in a bid to push the industry towards standardisation, as SeenThis Sustainability Lead Simon Johansson explains:

“The framework developed by SRI and Alliance Digitale is a very good starting point,” he says. “It scopes out the life cycle of online advertising and the distribution of creatives through servers, networks and onwards through to end-user devices, taking a bottom-up perspective, and allowing the use of very granular data, to quantify the emissions. It can be used also for those that don’t have this type of granular data, providing a database with conservative estimates so you don’t have to wait for perfect data to start calculating to see where your main emission sources are.”

Johansson is also encouraged by the fact that SRI and Alliance Digital are not trying to profit from the methodology, but rather, have made it available on an open source basis.

“Their aim is to encourage the industry to collaborate around it,” he says. “There are still refinements needed to make it even better, but GARM (the Global Alliance for Responsible Media) and WFA (World Federation of Advertisers), together with Ad Net Zero, are working on aligning the industry around this, and we’re putting our methodology into the knowledge bank with the aim of helping to improve the model still further.”

The new methodology will be applied in SeenThis’ Emissions Dashboard. Along with SeenThis corporate emissions, it will be used to quantify total emissions from creative delivery, and grammes of CO2e per thousand impressions (gPM), along with other KPIs, such as total data transfer, data transfer per impression, and an estimation of avoided impact compared to the use of conventional technology.

In addition to its own Emissions Dashboard, SeenThis’ granular data can also be input in other more holistic platforms and tools, including those from GroupM, Scope3, Cedara or Impact+, to cover more parts of the life cycle of an ad.

“We are thrilled that SeenThis is adopting the framework developed by SRI and Alliance Digitale,” says Arthur Millet, Directeur Générale at Alliance Digitale. “Sustainability in digital advertising is a key issue. By working together and aligning behind an agreed methodology, the industry can achieve better outcomes more quickly and more effectively.”

Hélène Chartier, Directrice Générale, SRI France, adds: “The adoption by SeenThis of the SRIxAD framework demonstrates once again the high expectations of our ecosystem for standardising carbon measurement methodology. This market alignment will hopefully accelerate concrete actions for reducing the carbon footprint of digital advertising.”

Source: SeenThis

  Agency, Alliance Digitale, Carbon Emissions, Digital marketing, SeenThis, SRI France