With each ad impression contributing towards global carbon emissions, the industry has finally started adopting Green AdTech practices. Companies like Google, IAB Europe, Equativ, and SeenThis are leading a sustainability shift in programmatic advertising. Read on to know how the companies are tackling carbon emissions.
January 2025 was the warmest globally, with the temperature being 1.75°C above the pre-industrial levels. According to a WMO report, there is a 70% possibility that the five-year average warming will be more than 1.5°C between 2025 and 2029. While there are many direct contributors, there are a few unsuspecting ones as well, one of them being the AdTech industry.
The Internet accounts for between 2% and 4% of all carbon emissions on the planet. And online advertising contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with each ad impression equating to 1g of carbon on average.
To put things into perspective, the internet’s carbon emissions are equal to that of the aviation industry (2%). Bringing more clarity, serving one million ad impressions emits almost one metric ton of carbon dioxide. If I put it into numbers, it is equivalent to a round trip from Boston to London per passenger or fully charging 121k smartphones or 2.4 million plastic straws.
What Emissions are We Talking About?
We categorize the emissions into three categories:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions generated from a company’s buildings, on-site operations, or any owned vehicles.
- Scope 2: Emissions resulting from the energy drawn from the power grid to operate a company’s buildings, facilities, and vehicles, including business-related travel.
- Scope 3: Emissions produced across a company’s supply chain, often making up over 90% of total carbon output within the digital advertising industry.
Scope 3 emissions are further categorized into two: Actions and Programmatic Supply Chain. The former includes server power, data transmission, ad and content production, and ad delivery, among others. On the other hand, the latter consists of consumers, publishers, SSPs, DSPs, advertisers, ad servers, etc.
Well, the industry had to do something.
What is the AdTech Industry Doing About It?
According to the IAB Australia Annual Report, one of the key priorities in 2025 of IAB has been to harmonize the carbon emissions in the programmatic advertising industry. IAB is one of the many programmatic entities coming forward to reduce the carbon footprint left by the industry.
1. IAB Europe’s LEAF Suite
Taking the initiative forward, IAB Europe launched the LEAF suite in April 2025 to promote sustainable digital advertising. It is a centralized platform that is designed to reduce the carbon footprint of digital advertising campaigns. The suite provides a simplified format for the AdTech stakeholders to stay updated and implement sustainability strategies in their programmatic operations.
This is what Townsend Feehan, IAB Europe’s CEO said about the suite:
“With LEAF, we are providing businesses with the practical tools they need to estimate and reduce emissions while maintaining the efficiency and effectiveness of digital advertising. IAB Europe is committed to driving industry-wide progress, and LEAF is a significant step in supporting stakeholders on their sustainability journey.”
The LEAF suite comes with two major utilities:
- OpenGHG: An innovative method for estimating carbon emissions from advertising campaigns in accordance with emerging global regulations.
- CreativeLi: A tool meant to demonstrate how display advertising creatives can be optimized by reducing file size while maintaining visual quality.
IAB Europe is planning to introduce more utilities under the LEAF suite to expand its scope in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
2. Sharethrough’s (now Equativ) GreenPMPs
Way before IAB, there was an entity that dreamt of eco-digital advertising: Sharethrough. Now operating under the name Equativ post-merger, Sharethrough was the first to launch environment-conscious GreenPMPs (Green Private Marketplaces) in 2022.
Built in partnership with Scope 3 as a part of its Green Media Product, GreenPMPs help advertisers cut carbon emissions by automatically excluding ad inventory with higher emissions.
Equativ in January 2025, rebranded its curation platform Equativ Buyer Connect as Maestro by Equativ with major refinements. And in March 2025, it integrated GreenPMPs into Maestro.
Sharethrough’s GreenPMPs solution has been implemented by approximately 15,000 brands, resulting in over 5 billion global impressions. GreenPMP campaigns show that targeting the top 10% of high-emission sites can reduce carbon emissions by 25% and improve performance (ExchangeWire).
Horizon Media, an independent global media agency and a big supporter of green media, had shifted all its campaigns running through Sharethrough SSP to GreenPMPs.
Horizon made the move after testing the performance of smaller campaigns run using GreenPMPs and discovering no negative impacts on scalability or performance. In some cases, more energy-efficient GreenPMPs not only reduced emissions but also improved performance due to less overlap with high-emission websites and wasteful impressions. Such inefficiencies usually happen when publishers overload pages with ads or use frequent ad refreshes.
Horizon’s display ads have emitted 51% less carbon over the last nine months since implementing GreenPMPs. Video marketing has resulted in a 57% carbon reduction. In total, Horizon has generated 300 million impressions while reducing 34 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent emissions. That’s almost equivalent to the carbon emissions produced by driving from New York City to Los Angeles 31 times (AdWeek).
3. Carbon Footprints for Google Ads
While Google has made strides in combating Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, not much has been done to counter Scope 3 emissions. But with mounting pressure for more sustainable measures, Google has started taking baby steps with Carbon Footprints for Google Ads.
Marketers with first-party data can now track campaign emissions across Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Google Ads.
Carbon Footprint for Google Ads provides emission metrics aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and Ad Net Zero’s Global Media Sustainability Framework.
Google also provides emissions calculators for its other services. Businesses using Google Cloud for website hosting, email, or workplace apps can generate reports to evaluate the environmental impact of their IT operations.
The calculator is a good step by Google, but more can be done, especially for Scope 3 emissions. Operating one of the largest AdTech businesses in the world, Scope 3 sustainability steps coming from Google are essential to drive a meaningful change across the Supply Chain.
4. SeenThis’s Adaptive Streaming Technology
While researching for this article, I found SeenThis to be quite interesting. To bring you up to speed, SeenThis is a pioneering technology that works on instant ad delivery to reduce data transfer using adaptive streaming technology. SeenThis’s technology revolves around ad delivery optimization to use less data, hence reducing emissions.
Leaning towards sustainable AdTech practices, the platform published its ad formats in the Scope3 collaborative sustainability platform for the users to know their emissions directly from Scope3 UI.
A study done by Lumens suggests that creatives served through SeenThis drive greater attention and more positive responses compared to using traditional delivery methods.
Moreover, ads delivered with SeenThis technology outperformed conventional methods across multiple metrics. 80% of SeenThis-powered ads captured user attention, compared to less than half with traditional delivery.
Additionally, 78% of these ads met the ‘technically viewable’ standard versus just two-thirds of conventional ads. Prompted brand recall also saw a 4% lift over standard banners.
Adding to this, SeenThis drives 1.7x more attentive seconds compared to conventional technology, resulting in an 81% higher brand effect.
SeenThis has collaborated with major brands to drive high-performing campaigns. Some of them include:
- Amazon Ads Partner Network for creating sustainable video ad campaigns
- Exverus to integrate its streaming vertical video technology into the Social Reach product
- Audi’s digital display and VOD campaign to promote its Q4 Sportback e-tron
5. IPG Mediabrands’ Climate Action Marketplace
IPB Mediabrands, a marketing solution owned by the Interpublic Group, launched its sustainable marketplace in July 2022. The marketplace was built in partnership with PubMatic and sustainability tech vendor SeenThis. To use SeenThis’s energy-efficient streaming technology in their campaign, clients simply have to check a box indicating the preferred use of SeenThis tech when setting up campaigns.
Post selection, the users will get access to a live dashboard reporting on carbon emissions at the campaign level. Using the insights, advertisers can make sustainable decisions and contribute towards lowered emissions.
IPG Mediabrands is one of the very few companies that came through with its promise of providing green AdTech practices. Way back in November 2022, the media house, in collaboration with Scope 3, had announced that it would offer tools to measure, lower, and offset CO₂ emissions generated by digital advertising activity.
6. Blockthrough’s Low-carbon Inventory
In March 2022, Blockthrough, a renowned adblock monetization platform, introduced its low-carbon ad product. Developed in collaboration with Scope3, this product facilitates brands and agencies to access Blockthrough’s low-carbon inventory through their existing DSPs using a universal Deal ID.
Through this initiative, brands and agencies will get access to brand-safe and premium display inventory with a low-carbon footprint. According to Scope 3, the ad formats excluded from the Acceptable Ads Program consume more bandwidth, making their carbon footprint significantly higher. This makes Acceptable Ads automatically an emission-optimized supply path for advertising.
Blockthrough serves as an inspiring example within the AdTech industry. It tweaked its existing resources to opt for a more sustainable ad serving approach. This proves that innovation and environmental responsibility can go hand in hand.
7. Good-Loop’s Green Ad Tag
Good-Loop is an ethical ad platform that aims to make online advertising more charitable. In July 2021, it launched the Green Ad Tag (GAT), a purpose-driven tool that lets advertisers track the exact carbon cost of their campaigns throughout the campaign lifecycle.
According to Good-Loop’s carbon calculator, an average internet marketing campaign emits 5.4 tons of CO₂, which is one-third of what the average US consumer creates in a year.
Good-Loop’s revolutionary 1X1 pixel detects data transfer in real time, accounting for differences in region, device, bandwidth utilization, and time of day. These expenses are then matched with local electricity use, allowing companies and agencies to closely monitor emissions via a dedicated dashboard.
In June 2023, it launched a carbon-filtering within GAT that enabled advertisers to filter out publishers who did not meet their sustainability targets. However, due to increased backlash from publishers, it included reduction recommendations under Good Measures within the dashboard to let them know how they can reduce their scope 3 emissions.
It Doesn’t End Here…
There are many more Green AdTech initiatives taken up by various stakeholders to make their supply path more sustainable. Web hosting companies like GreenGeeks, Hostgator, and A2 Hosting offer green hosting to publishers. GreenGeeks is a noteworthy name here as it optimizes all its processes to make them green.
Another worthy mention is YieldBird’s Unfilled Recovery. It reauctions the unsold impression for the ad to be shown in a duplicate ad slot. This ensures that the ad is served, and the environmental impact of a wasted ad request is avoided.
SmartClip TV’s Adkymia DSP launched a carbon footprint calculator in 2022. This tool evaluates a campaign’s carbon footprint across the entire process, from TV spot production and validation to programming and airing.
Big names in AdTech like MediaVine and InMobi Advertising have also joined the cause to lower their carbon footprint, with InfoLinks being the latest addition (April 2025).
What Does the Future Hold?
Looking ahead, we can say that carbon transparency will become the new standard in programmatic advertising. Just like viewability and CTR, low-carbon deals could become the new norm on the path towards sustainability. With publishers and advertisers embracing measurement and mitigation tools, we will see a gradual shift in climate-conscious campaign planning from niche to necessity.
However, Scope 3 emissions are too large to be precisely calculated. Moreover, it’s uncertain when these Green Adtech initiatives will trickle down the supply chain to small and mid-sized stakeholders.
The real shift, however, will happen when environmental accountability is embedded not just in tech stacks but in business models. We can also expect closer collaboration across the supply chain, sharing data to identify and reduce carbon-intensive practices collectively. With more brands aligning their media buying with ESG goals, GreenAdTech can become a baseline expectation rather than a mere competitive edge.
While there’s more to be done on the Green Adtech front, it’s a good start. The future of ad tech won’t be just about performance, but performance that doesn’t cost our planet.
