SUSTAINABLE EFFICIENCY IN DIGITAL ADVERTISING

How we at Welect create a win-win situation for the climate and campaigns.

Sustainability and climate protection are currently among the most important and controversial topics of our time. And so, in addition to the global climate debate, every industry has its own little ‘climate debate’. With our choice-driven approach, we at Welect stand for a sustainable approach to the valuable resource of ‘user attention’. In this short blog article, I would like to tell you why this is not only easy on users' nerves, but also has a positive impact on the climate.

Let's start with two small calculation examples from everyday life:

• One tweet = CO2 emissions of 294 grams (0.63 kWh / German electricity mix - 470 grams of CO2 per kWh) With an economical petrol car you could drive a good 2.5 kilometres, with an efficient electric car it would even be 4.3 (source). 
• One enquiry with the most popular search engine = 0.3 watt hours. So with 20 queries you could light an energy-saving lamp for an hour, with 200 queries you could iron a shirt (source).

Around 4 million search queries are submitted to online search engines every minute. Especially in the digital, technical world of the internet, it is difficult to grasp what the impact on the environment and the climate actually looks like.

Do you know how much emission your photo upload on Instagram causes? Or how much CO2 emissions are caused by Google searches every day? No? You're certainly not alone in this!

Whether analogue or digital - all advertising leaves a carbon footprint

Without examining the topic of sustainability from all three important angles - economic, social and ecological - or taking part in the debate as to whether ‘analogue’ or ‘digital’ is the more sustainable form of advertising, I would like to focus on one universal fact in this article: Whether analogue or digital, all advertising leaves a Co2 footprint!

Measuring, understanding and, above all, offsetting this footprint in an appropriate way is a sensible and, in today's world, necessary step in the green direction of the marketing industry. And it doesn't matter how big this step is. Be it the complete carbon neutrality of an entire agency network, ‘just’ switching to 100% green electricity for the company headquarters or supporting the sustainable organic farmers around the corner. Every measure contributes to the same goal and makes an important contribution!

At Welect, we also offer our customers the opportunity to offset the CO2 emissions of their campaign with our responsibility programme. Does it make sense? Definitely! But let's take a step back. Nobody would deny the important role that recycling plays in sustainability. But no-one would disagree in exactly the same way if waste avoidance were not described as the much better and more effective option. The important question, which is still not very much in the spotlight and is not reflected daily in our own LinkedIn timeline through various posts, should therefore be: What can we do to prevent so many emissions from being created in the first place.

It's better to avoid emissions instead of offsetting them later - this also applies online!

So our simple answer is: less is more in this case, or better!

In concrete terms, this could mean deliberately avoiding impressions and autoplays for uninterested users. Since 2010, the data sizes of the website desktop versions* (quadrupled) and especially the mobile versions (almost tenfold) have increased immensely and reached an incredible amount of data volume. Data volume, which of course also consumes corresponding amounts of energy. However, tracking, the data size of embedded adverts and, above all, the collection and storage of data also play a significant role here. Due to ‘energy guzzlers’ such as mass storage, server data transfer and the entire infrastructure, the ‘web’, viewed as a country, has now moved into third place in the country ranking behind China and the USA (source).

Small adjustments, big impact - attention instead of autoplays!

Should we continue to overload users with the highest possible number of cheap impressions and force branding through quantity while also consuming significantly more energy? Unfortunately, many media plans still work according to the motto ‘a lot helps a lot’. From our point of view, it makes much more sense and is therefore more sustainable if, for example, a video ad is only played when the user has shown interest and starts playback themselves. In this way, the high energy expenditure for playback only occurs if the user is interested and provides their attention. In contrast to autoplay, in this case we save the energy consumption of playing a large video file format and also use the resource ‘user attention’ more sparingly. The two-sided cookie waiver can also have a further sustainable effect. This applies both to the avoidance of data collection and the use of existing data sources. In this case, these would no longer have to be stored, linked, retrieved and utilised. A lot of energy is also required in the downstream process of data collection, e.g. for matching and managing cookies & identifiers and the corresponding synchronisation with other (not only 1st party) data sources. These factors can be saved and significantly reduced with the help of Welect in the energy balance of the campaign.

The small examples at the beginning of this article have made it clear that effective and efficient campaign playout can be a further building block towards a more sustainable media world and that the avoidance of ‘low-quality’ impressions & especially autoplays has a significant impact on the carbon footprint of campaigns. It's time to rethink quantity as a quality criterion when assigning campaign KPIs and then analysing them.

Thanks to our Choice-Driven Advertising approach, the Welect Responsibility Programme, not collecting user data & our attitude to efficient advertising, we at Welect are on the right track and may be able to further advance the quantity discussion in the media industry. We're staying on the ball and of course continuing to look at how we can reduce our ecological footprint.

Have you also looked into this topic and perhaps have additional ideas or information for us? Then feel free to contact us at any time!