The largest emissions in digital media and advertising come from data transfers and much of that passes through to DSPs, giving them a greater ability to reduce carbon emissions. But DSPs are only part of the supply chain, how can they use that data to help decarbonize the rest of the programmatic supply chain? In this post, we cover 4 ways DSPs empower buyers and sellers to reduce carbon emissions that we learned from the DSP panel at the Green Media Summit.
DSP Panel: How DSPs Can Empower Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
3 industry leaders from some of the largest DSPs in the digital advertising industry went on stage to discuss their findings and methods at the first-ever Green Media Summit about how DSPs can help the media and advertising industry reduce their carbon emissions. Greg MacDonald, Founder of Chelsea Strategies, hosted Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk, Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant and Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform. Here are some of the lessons learned from the panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
4 Ways DSPs are Empowering Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
1. DSPs can use SPO to make sustainability more cost-effective.
By now it’s no surprise that Supply Path Optimization (SPO) is effective in reducing carbon emissions regardless of where in the programmatic supply chain you stand. But how companies go about their SPO efforts are unique and where DSPs have the advantage in SPO is they sit in the “middle” of the digital ads supply chain. DSPs have a sea of data that flows through them in this position. As Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform said “there will be an interesting pendulum and an evolution that we're all going to go through and we need to go through intelligently with the data we talked about.”
Related: 5 Trends to Expect in Sustainability in 2023 — Sharethrough
Using that data, DSPs can help buyers and sellers reduce their carbon emissions while still remaining cost-effective and profitable by becoming more direct, reducing the number of Queries per Second (QPS) and removing empty or wasteful bid requests. This was affirmed by Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk who said “But the good news for our industry is that I think advertisers don't have to face that challenge because with fewer hops in the supply chain, you're becoming more sustainable and it should be cheaper.”
2. DSPs can make it easier for advertisers to purchase green media.
Knowing how DSPs can make sustainability cheaper through SPO, how can DSPs make sustainability easier for buyers and sellers? Like in SPO, removing steps from purchasing green inventory would make it easier for advertisers to do so. DSPs could build, for example, a button, a checkbox or a slider, that exclusively selects low-carbon paths. But it doesn’t have only to be green inventory.
Related: How Digital Media can Reach Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030 — Sharethrough
DSPs can also find ways to prioritize low-emission formats or place a lower frequency cap on high-emissions formats as Joseph Dressler mentioned “Whether that's anything you can think about, audience targeting, PMPs, there's lots of different ways to go about it. The part of the things that we can all learn is how we make it easier for all of our clients to use the platform in a more effective way.”
Imagine, the path to sustainability only a few clicks away. The sentiment was shared with Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant saying “That's our responsibility as being on the buy side, to be investigating that and exploring that.”
3. DSPs need help from SSPs to quantify carbon reductions for advertisers.
As the name suggests, DSPs lean more on the demand side of things. This is where they need the help of SSPs. The unrivaled data SSPs have on the supply side can help quantify carbon reductions for advertisers. As Joseph Dressler said “Using all the data that comes in, I think many people said it, there's terabytes of data. How do we use that data to figure out what supply sources end up being successful?”
When advertisers are able to prove reduction efforts, it will speed up the adoption process throughout the rest of the media and advertising industry. If DSPs and SSPs can work together to estimate potential carbon emissions before the campaign launch, that enables advertisers to make more informed decisions. Advertisers can determine for themselves how much to balance spend and carbon reductions between different ads. “Having some type of quantifiable metric in the platform that says by choosing this, you're reducing carbon by X amount. Being able to quantify that into a carbon number, I feel like would be really helpful and it's a great idea.” echoed Maggie Mattingley.
4. Prioritizing sustainability requires top-down and bottoms-up approach to gain momentum.
For sustainability initiatives to really take hold, there needs to be a company culture change that starts at the top, makes its way down, and then works its way back up from the bottom. C-suites and other leaders can set an example for their employees by being the first to suggest or implement sustainability solutions and initiatives. Jon Schulz added “We do have an internal sustainability working team that's at the C-level at Viant and I chair that group. So I know that group is meeting on a regular basis and we're doing what we need to do.” Maggie Mattingley agreed that “it needs to start small and I think it needs to be at the C-suite.”
Additionally, C-suites and leaders can encourage or reward employees for their green contributions and sustainability efforts. In turn, if employees feel motivated to find ways they can reduce their carbon footprint, more and more employees will contribute. Jon Schulz shared his insights “It's the same two guys that lead and run our company that are coming back and saying now, what are we doing as a company to improve ourselves? And so when you have it at that level and you've got that level of commitment, it's infectious and it, and it drives through the organization and it makes you want to do better.”
And that will cause a feedback loop that will drive organizations, and the industry at large, to become sustainable, at a more efficient and faster pace. More than any single committee or group can do alone.
DSPs could use some encouragement and direction
While DSPs can do a lot to empower buyers and sellers, they can’t do it alone. Advertisers need to provide DSPs with some direction about what they need help with when it comes to sustainability. Joseph Dressler raised an interesting point “Less than 5 RFPs out of 100, which I thought was a good statistical number, had any mention whatsoever of a desire to look at something green or sustainable.” DSPs are asking advertisers to push them to create sustainability offerings, “force us to do a better job on your behalf” added Joseph Dressler.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive new Green Media Summit information and updates.
The largest emissions in digital media and advertising come from data transfers and much of that passes through to DSPs, giving them a greater ability to reduce carbon emissions. But DSPs are only part of the supply chain, how can they use that data to help decarbonize the rest of the programmatic supply chain? In this post, we cover 4 ways DSPs empower buyers and sellers to reduce carbon emissions that we learned from the DSP panel at the Green Media Summit.
DSP Panel: How DSPs Can Empower Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
3 industry leaders from some of the largest DSPs in the digital advertising industry went on stage to discuss their findings and methods at the first-ever Green Media Summit about how DSPs can help the media and advertising industry reduce their carbon emissions. Greg MacDonald, Founder of Chelsea Strategies, hosted Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk, Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant and Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform. Here are some of the lessons learned from the panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
4 Ways DSPs are Empowering Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
1. DSPs can use SPO to make sustainability more cost-effective.
By now it’s no surprise that Supply Path Optimization (SPO) is effective in reducing carbon emissions regardless of where in the programmatic supply chain you stand. But how companies go about their SPO efforts are unique and where DSPs have the advantage in SPO is they sit in the “middle” of the digital ads supply chain. DSPs have a sea of data that flows through them in this position. As Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform said “there will be an interesting pendulum and an evolution that we're all going to go through and we need to go through intelligently with the data we talked about.”
Related: 5 Trends to Expect in Sustainability in 2023 — Sharethrough
Using that data, DSPs can help buyers and sellers reduce their carbon emissions while still remaining cost-effective and profitable by becoming more direct, reducing the number of Queries per Second (QPS) and removing empty or wasteful bid requests. This was affirmed by Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk who said “But the good news for our industry is that I think advertisers don't have to face that challenge because with fewer hops in the supply chain, you're becoming more sustainable and it should be cheaper.”
2. DSPs can make it easier for advertisers to purchase green media.
Knowing how DSPs can make sustainability cheaper through SPO, how can DSPs make sustainability easier for buyers and sellers? Like in SPO, removing steps from purchasing green inventory would make it easier for advertisers to do so. DSPs could build, for example, a button, a checkbox or a slider, that exclusively selects low-carbon paths. But it doesn’t have only to be green inventory.
Related: How Digital Media can Reach Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030 — Sharethrough
DSPs can also find ways to prioritize low-emission formats or place a lower frequency cap on high-emissions formats as Joseph Dressler mentioned “Whether that's anything you can think about, audience targeting, PMPs, there's lots of different ways to go about it. The part of the things that we can all learn is how we make it easier for all of our clients to use the platform in a more effective way.”
Imagine, the path to sustainability only a few clicks away. The sentiment was shared with Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant saying “That's our responsibility as being on the buy side, to be investigating that and exploring that.”
3. DSPs need help from SSPs to quantify carbon reductions for advertisers.
As the name suggests, DSPs lean more on the demand side of things. This is where they need the help of SSPs. The unrivaled data SSPs have on the supply side can help quantify carbon reductions for advertisers. As Joseph Dressler said “Using all the data that comes in, I think many people said it, there's terabytes of data. How do we use that data to figure out what supply sources end up being successful?”
When advertisers are able to prove reduction efforts, it will speed up the adoption process throughout the rest of the media and advertising industry. If DSPs and SSPs can work together to estimate potential carbon emissions before the campaign launch, that enables advertisers to make more informed decisions. Advertisers can determine for themselves how much to balance spend and carbon reductions between different ads. “Having some type of quantifiable metric in the platform that says by choosing this, you're reducing carbon by X amount. Being able to quantify that into a carbon number, I feel like would be really helpful and it's a great idea.” echoed Maggie Mattingley.
4. Prioritizing sustainability requires top-down and bottoms-up approach to gain momentum.
For sustainability initiatives to really take hold, there needs to be a company culture change that starts at the top, makes its way down, and then works its way back up from the bottom. C-suites and other leaders can set an example for their employees by being the first to suggest or implement sustainability solutions and initiatives. Jon Schulz added “We do have an internal sustainability working team that's at the C-level at Viant and I chair that group. So I know that group is meeting on a regular basis and we're doing what we need to do.” Maggie Mattingley agreed that “it needs to start small and I think it needs to be at the C-suite.”
Additionally, C-suites and leaders can encourage or reward employees for their green contributions and sustainability efforts. In turn, if employees feel motivated to find ways they can reduce their carbon footprint, more and more employees will contribute. Jon Schulz shared his insights “It's the same two guys that lead and run our company that are coming back and saying now, what are we doing as a company to improve ourselves? And so when you have it at that level and you've got that level of commitment, it's infectious and it, and it drives through the organization and it makes you want to do better.”
And that will cause a feedback loop that will drive organizations, and the industry at large, to become sustainable, at a more efficient and faster pace. More than any single committee or group can do alone.
DSPs could use some encouragement and direction
While DSPs can do a lot to empower buyers and sellers, they can’t do it alone. Advertisers need to provide DSPs with some direction about what they need help with when it comes to sustainability. Joseph Dressler raised an interesting point “Less than 5 RFPs out of 100, which I thought was a good statistical number, had any mention whatsoever of a desire to look at something green or sustainable.” DSPs are asking advertisers to push them to create sustainability offerings, “force us to do a better job on your behalf” added Joseph Dressler.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive new Green Media Summit information and updates.
Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech is a short 3-minute podcast exploring the news in the digital advertising industry. Ad tech is a fast-growing industry with many updates happening daily. As it can be hard for most to keep up with the latest news, the Sharethrough team wanted to create an audio series compiling notable mentions each week.
The largest emissions in digital media and advertising come from data transfers and much of that passes through to DSPs, giving them a greater ability to reduce carbon emissions. But DSPs are only part of the supply chain, how can they use that data to help decarbonize the rest of the programmatic supply chain? In this post, we cover 4 ways DSPs empower buyers and sellers to reduce carbon emissions that we learned from the DSP panel at the Green Media Summit.
DSP Panel: How DSPs Can Empower Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
3 industry leaders from some of the largest DSPs in the digital advertising industry went on stage to discuss their findings and methods at the first-ever Green Media Summit about how DSPs can help the media and advertising industry reduce their carbon emissions. Greg MacDonald, Founder of Chelsea Strategies, hosted Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk, Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant and Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform. Here are some of the lessons learned from the panel.
Watch the 2-minute Recap of the Session:
Click to watch the full panel.
4 Ways DSPs are Empowering Buyers and Sellers to Reduce Carbon Emissions
1. DSPs can use SPO to make sustainability more cost-effective.
By now it’s no surprise that Supply Path Optimization (SPO) is effective in reducing carbon emissions regardless of where in the programmatic supply chain you stand. But how companies go about their SPO efforts are unique and where DSPs have the advantage in SPO is they sit in the “middle” of the digital ads supply chain. DSPs have a sea of data that flows through them in this position. As Joseph Dressler, VP of Sales, America at Adform said “there will be an interesting pendulum and an evolution that we're all going to go through and we need to go through intelligently with the data we talked about.”
Related: 5 Trends to Expect in Sustainability in 2023 — Sharethrough
Using that data, DSPs can help buyers and sellers reduce their carbon emissions while still remaining cost-effective and profitable by becoming more direct, reducing the number of Queries per Second (QPS) and removing empty or wasteful bid requests. This was affirmed by Maggie Mattingley, Lead Director Inventory Management at The Trade Desk who said “But the good news for our industry is that I think advertisers don't have to face that challenge because with fewer hops in the supply chain, you're becoming more sustainable and it should be cheaper.”
2. DSPs can make it easier for advertisers to purchase green media.
Knowing how DSPs can make sustainability cheaper through SPO, how can DSPs make sustainability easier for buyers and sellers? Like in SPO, removing steps from purchasing green inventory would make it easier for advertisers to do so. DSPs could build, for example, a button, a checkbox or a slider, that exclusively selects low-carbon paths. But it doesn’t have only to be green inventory.
Related: How Digital Media can Reach Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030 — Sharethrough
DSPs can also find ways to prioritize low-emission formats or place a lower frequency cap on high-emissions formats as Joseph Dressler mentioned “Whether that's anything you can think about, audience targeting, PMPs, there's lots of different ways to go about it. The part of the things that we can all learn is how we make it easier for all of our clients to use the platform in a more effective way.”
Imagine, the path to sustainability only a few clicks away. The sentiment was shared with Jon Schulz, Chief Marketing Officer at Viant saying “That's our responsibility as being on the buy side, to be investigating that and exploring that.”
3. DSPs need help from SSPs to quantify carbon reductions for advertisers.
As the name suggests, DSPs lean more on the demand side of things. This is where they need the help of SSPs. The unrivaled data SSPs have on the supply side can help quantify carbon reductions for advertisers. As Joseph Dressler said “Using all the data that comes in, I think many people said it, there's terabytes of data. How do we use that data to figure out what supply sources end up being successful?”
When advertisers are able to prove reduction efforts, it will speed up the adoption process throughout the rest of the media and advertising industry. If DSPs and SSPs can work together to estimate potential carbon emissions before the campaign launch, that enables advertisers to make more informed decisions. Advertisers can determine for themselves how much to balance spend and carbon reductions between different ads. “Having some type of quantifiable metric in the platform that says by choosing this, you're reducing carbon by X amount. Being able to quantify that into a carbon number, I feel like would be really helpful and it's a great idea.” echoed Maggie Mattingley.
4. Prioritizing sustainability requires top-down and bottoms-up approach to gain momentum.
For sustainability initiatives to really take hold, there needs to be a company culture change that starts at the top, makes its way down, and then works its way back up from the bottom. C-suites and other leaders can set an example for their employees by being the first to suggest or implement sustainability solutions and initiatives. Jon Schulz added “We do have an internal sustainability working team that's at the C-level at Viant and I chair that group. So I know that group is meeting on a regular basis and we're doing what we need to do.” Maggie Mattingley agreed that “it needs to start small and I think it needs to be at the C-suite.”
Additionally, C-suites and leaders can encourage or reward employees for their green contributions and sustainability efforts. In turn, if employees feel motivated to find ways they can reduce their carbon footprint, more and more employees will contribute. Jon Schulz shared his insights “It's the same two guys that lead and run our company that are coming back and saying now, what are we doing as a company to improve ourselves? And so when you have it at that level and you've got that level of commitment, it's infectious and it, and it drives through the organization and it makes you want to do better.”
And that will cause a feedback loop that will drive organizations, and the industry at large, to become sustainable, at a more efficient and faster pace. More than any single committee or group can do alone.
DSPs could use some encouragement and direction
While DSPs can do a lot to empower buyers and sellers, they can’t do it alone. Advertisers need to provide DSPs with some direction about what they need help with when it comes to sustainability. Joseph Dressler raised an interesting point “Less than 5 RFPs out of 100, which I thought was a good statistical number, had any mention whatsoever of a desire to look at something green or sustainable.” DSPs are asking advertisers to push them to create sustainability offerings, “force us to do a better job on your behalf” added Joseph Dressler.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive new Green Media Summit information and updates.
Founded in 2015, Calibrate is a yearly conference for new engineering managers hosted by seasoned engineering managers. The experience level of the speakers ranges from newcomers all the way through senior engineering leaders with over twenty years of experience in the field. Each speaker is greatly concerned about the craft of engineering management. Organized and hosted by Sharethrough, it was conducted yearly in September, from 2015-2019 in San Francisco, California.
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