Programmatic : The problem with carbon footprint for the Programmatic campaigns 🌍

Today, measuring the carbon impact of programmatic campaigns still relies heavily on analyzing ADS.TXT files (example: lemonde.fr/ads.txt) to determine the pollution level of publisher sites:
👉 The more SSP seats a publisher declares in its ADS.TXT, the more it is assumed to pollute.
👉 Result: publishers can get blocked by the "Carbon optimized" prebid filters used on the DSP/Curator side because of this criterion.

❓ But is this approach really relevant?

Spoiler alert: not really...

🔎 Three major blind spots with ADS.TXT files :

1️⃣ Are all the seats declared in ads.txt actually active?

NO: Some publishers in France have already "cleaned up" their ads.txt (Prisma Media, Les Echos Le Parisien Médias / Paris Match Médias, etc., see Minted article), without it having any real impact on their revenue → proof that the assumed pollution wasn't always real.

2️⃣ Are SSP seats called upon at every opportunity?

NO: To limit their infrastructure costs, SSPs and DSPs have implemented throttling algorithms that block Bid Requests based on the probability of not successfully selling the impression → resulting in a drastic drop in the volume of useless repetitions.

3️⃣ Is a website's carbon impact solely linked to its ad stack?

NO: other criteria should be taken into account: onsite optimizations (image/video compression), server locations, etc.

💡 Conclusion: relying on ADS.TXT analysis to deduce carbon impact paints a biased picture. Some of the worst MFA websites get better marks than premium publishers...

There is another way to truly opptimised carbon footprint in programmatic : to fight against useless pollution. Good news is, it will also increase your ad performance :

Here are some filters you can apply to block useless pollution
🚫 Blocking Resellers SSP that brings no value in the chain (by doing SPO)
🚫 Blocking sites/subdomains that pollute through Ad Cluttering, high ad refresh/rotation, and bid repeat
🚫 Blocking small creatives (e.g., 320x50, 728x90), which officially pollute less but generate absolutely no impact for the brand

It happens that's exactly what we do at GreyFox Ads 😉

At GreyFox Ads, we beleive the quality OpenWeb brings real efficiency to advertisers. We are the smallest Ad Network in France, but not the dumbest : we've created Master Deals to bring Media Traders :
⭐clean supply,
⭐smart targeting,
⭐simplicity,
⭐cost transparency.

You want to work with a quality partner to operate Video/Display programmatic campaign on the french market ?
📩 Contact GreyFox Ads !

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