The Business Case For Carbon Cuts | AdExchanger

"When sustainable advertising startup Scope3 launched in early 2022, the carbon footprint of digital advertising quickly became an ad tech talking point. One of the company's co-founders, Brian O'Kelley, is often called the " godfather of ad tech," so his ideas tend to set the industry's agenda. The original thesis centered on the notion that measuring the emissions volume of online ads is the first step toward taking action to reduce them."

"Within the first year, the Scope3 team realized that a more effective pitch than "Let's save the environment" is "Let's cut out the crap" (while also helping save the environment). "If it's your job to hit certain KPIs as a business, you're not going to want to vanquish those, maybe not get a bonus ... there needed to be true business impact," Coghlan says. "We saw that carbon was a lens for actually getting rid of an incredible amount of inefficiencies.""

"Unnecessary hops in the programmatic supply chain, for example, increase energy consumption and create hidden costs. Made-for-advertising websites generate disproportionately high carbon emissions and contribute little if any value. Too many middlemen add layers of counterproductive complexity. "When you think about carbon emissions and grams of carbon and the models that are used, which are agnostic to advertising, we're just applying them to advertising," Coghlan says. "That's very different to the metrics that we just make up within the industry, like viewability.""

Scope3 launched in early 2022, bringing attention to the carbon footprint of digital advertising and prompting industry conversation. Brian O'Kelley, often called the godfather of ad tech, influenced the agenda through Scope3's focus. The original idea held that measuring ad emissions is the first step to reduction. The industry prioritized cutting financial waste, and Scope3 found that carbon measurement exposed many of the same inefficiencies. A business-focused message—reducing waste—proved more effective than an environmental-only appeal. Unnecessary programmatic hops, made-for-ad sites, and excessive intermediaries increase energy use and hidden costs. Carbon models are external and agnostic, unlike invented metrics such as viewability. Scope3 also pursued an agentic media platform and explored energy-efficient AI and open standards for AI agents.

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