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TWW 065 ft Deep Dive

TWW 065 ft Deep Dive

Friday 22nd July

July 21, 2022

👋 Welcome to the 4 new subscribers, you’re in great company! Melbourne shivered through the coldest day in 4 years, whilst the UK melted in 40c heat to set unwanted new records☀With a lot of talk in the media around climate change, this week’s Widget takes a closer look at the knock-on effects & solutions👀

🌊Deep dive🌊

If you hadn’t noticed, or, maybe you’re blissfully unaware/ignorant, our beautiful planet is heating up more than Cam Smith on the back 9 at St Andrew’s⛳ An unforeseen consequence, Ads & the Environment.

In last week’s edition, I featured Safari’s new power consumption tool and in digging some more it became apparent that Google had also created a new Carbon Footprint tool to measure & reduce your businesses’ Google Cloud carbon emissions.

Not bad timing, seeing as even their data centers are MELTING with the extreme heat witnessed in the UK - oh, and how do they cool this? Water. Which, coincidentally is also being criticized, as parts of the world suffer drought that has never been seen before. Microsoft shared that its appetite for water has grown steadily over the last 5 years growing from 67.5 million cubic feet in 2017 to just over 158 million cubic feet in 2021! Worth noting that they are replenishing this, reducing reliance by 95% in 2024. Alongside this, we’re seeing Microsoft sign up to a 10 year carbon dioxide removal deal as they pledge to be carbon negative by 2030.

In the agency world, multi-national holding companies are sprinting to create carbon calculators and demonstrate how the media they buy is not only effective but also efficient for the earth - aligning to brands’ core values (obviously not the fossil fuel kind) and becoming a sustainable partner for the future. But, with Digital media spending growth up 35% in the last two years, are we part of the problem?

Online advertising energy consumption TWh distribution (a), and total infrastructure energy consumption TWh distribution (b).

Fun Fact for your next trivia night…Did you know that the internet represents 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions? That, my friend, is on par with the aviation industry. There’s even a study that claims 2.3% of total emissions could be attributed to online advertising. Wait, What?!

(This has been simplified, if you’re in ad tech and shaking your fist at the screen right now, I am aware of how complex the advertising ecosystem is.)

So, solution time! In Digital advertising, when an ad is loaded on a page it is downloaded by your browser & on ad-heavy sites, it can use a lot of computing power to process, download, and load the ads. And computing power requires energy (lots of it, see chart above), if that isn’t renewable or clean energy then it’s damaging to the environment - etc. New technology partners such as SeenThis have done a TONNE of work on this, (read the whitepaper here) and their offering focuses on streaming ads.

These simpsons themed limewire memes are brilliant | LimeWire | Know Your Meme

Remember when we used to download MP3s? Legally of course! And then Spotify swanned in and offered high fidelity music instantly with NO downloads? This is the same notion, by sending data packets rather than downloading you are reducing the amount of data sent, plus you’re able to utilize typically heavy video banners guilt-free - pretty smart ay? Lower data sent→ lower computing power→ lower energy consumption = happy environment.

Elsewhere, in OOH, JC Decaux became the first Aussie company to receive certification from Climate Active for its carbon neutral advertising transit products. Which I believe means that their printers are more efficient & use environmentally friendly products? Either way, it’s a step in the right direction.

So what have we learned in that whirlwind of a deep dive? Like the 2004 classic featuring a young hunky Ashton Kutcher, the choices we make in our media buying and planning really do have a knock-on effect that requires all parties to come together for the greater good. Here’s hoping for more good news stories here 🤞

🤯The BIG stories🤯

Uh Oh: Netflix Is Testing Ways to Make You Stop Sharing Your Password | GQ

Netflix tests a new ‘add a home’ button, to charge your parents & cheap mates. As the streaming service posts, it’s biggest quarterly loss, EVER. Ads can’t come soon enough…

📚Studies & Research📚

A US study found that Advertisers spent $115m on clickbait sites from Jan 2020 - May 2022. In context, you could buy Erling Haaland, a two-bed flat in Sydney, or a tank full of petrol for that amount.