Digital ads are fueling a climate catastrophe. Take these steps to offset the hidden cost of industry on our planet.

The opinions expressed by entrepreneurs contributors are their own.

The average consumer may not realize how powerful it takes to place the targeted ad they see online every day. So, to many, the hidden impact of digital advertising may come as a surprise: digital advertising has a massive carbon footprint. A typical digital ad campaign for a single brand can produce hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide. In the UK, for example, an average digital advertising campaign emits over 5.4 tonnes of CO2. To put that figure into perspective, that's half of a consumer's annual emissions in the UK and more than a third of carbon emissions from fossil fuels per capita in the US.

The world is falling short of the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in multiple ways. So you might be wondering: why do we need to pay special attention to the amount of CO2 emissions? contributed specifically by online advertising? Well, one reason seems obvious: these shows are often ignored.

Like it or not, the global online advertising industry has a huge influence on everyone, making us all part of the problem. Besides being a powerful driver of our often excessive (and wasteful) shopping habits, just viewing multiple search ads, banners, interstitials, and video pre-rolls daily, in addition to hundreds of digital releases so to speak In-home advertisements (on the streets, in malls and elsewhere) have a huge impact on the global carbon footprint.

Think about it: the footprint of a short email is estimated to be 0.3 grams of CO2, and that number can be as high as 17g for a longer version, according to research by Mike Berners-Lee. And how many do you receive each day? Dozens, even hundreds, and it counts.

And while the jury is still out on whether we can make online advertising carbon neutral, this key question remains: what concrete steps do we need to take to get closer to that goal?

But first, let's define what carbon neutrality actually means.

What is carbon neutrality?

To put it simply, carbon neutrality implies that the amount of carbon emissions is balanced with the amount of emissions absorbed by natural carbon sinks (e.g. tropical forests).

Thus, to be considered a carbon neutral company, a company must demonstrate that its amount of greenhouse gases emitted is canceled out by the amount of gases adsorbed, either by reducing the number of its emissions or by buying the so-to-talk about carbon offset credits, i.e. permits to emit a specific amount of greenhouse gases, such as CO2.

Identify sources of emissions in the digital advertising supply chain

The first step in reducing digital advertising emissions is to identify the main sources of these emissions in the digital advertising supply chain. For online advertising, in addition to travel costs, major sources of emissions include data transmission, data center, and device usage in each of the following areas:

The production of advertising creatives - from equipment rental to post-production and team travel. Programmatic advertising transactions – defined as the automated buying and selling of advertising space online – play a huge role in generating carbon emissions. For example, WPP, the world's largest investor in media advertising, reports that 55% of its current carbon emissions come from the programmatic supply chain that runs campaigns on behalf of its clients. Ad targeting and measurement - this includes selecting audience segments, uploading the audience segment to the ad platform, and continuously tracking ad performance by multiple scripts on the websites. Ad serving on desktop and mobile web, connected TVs and mobile apps - for example, streaming a one-minute video on a 50-inch LED TV in the US.