And there is still a lack of industry knowledge. Fewer than five out of 100 requests for proposals recently received by demand-side platform Adform had any mention of sustainability whatsoever, said Joseph Dressler, vp of sales, America at Adform, at the event.
Navigating questions around carbon offsets and how to SPO
While publishers agree that SPO goals and sustainability goals can align, there is less agreement on the optimal way to improve supply paths.
Publishers have to choose how soon they want to cut ad-tech partners not delivering results versus working with partners to help them better meet their needs.
“Specifically for the green initiative, our strategy has been to optimize our partnerships instead of cutting partners,” Liao said. “For overall SPO, we actively evaluate partner performance, and we would terminate partnerships due to performance issues.”
Another choice for publishers (and advertisers) is how they’ll use carbon offsets in their media plans, an area that has caused confusion in the market since not all offsets are created equal.
While Insider parent Axel Springer is purchasing offsets to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2024, the company is not buying these offsets on a campaign basis, Liao said.
Publishers and advertisers can work with firms to buy carbon offsets that correspond to their emissions in a particular programmatic campaign, but this can come at a per-CPM cost for both advertisers and publishers.
“It seems to be another tech tax,” Liao said.
Growing publisher revenue is not immediate
And while there is emerging evidence that supply path optimization can benefit sustainability, publishers are still gathering evidence that it will improve their bottom lines.
While culling ad-tech partners has had no positive—or negative—impact on revenue for Insider, yet, Liao said he sees promise in faster-loading webpages that bring in more readers and the ability to package green inventory at a premium to attract higher-CPM deals with eco-conscious buyers. But these benefits are still somewhat theoretical.
“Negative effects would be immediate,” Liao said. “Positive effects would not.”
In fact, sustainability efforts could have negative effects on publishers. Fewer ads on a page generate fewer emissions but potentially earn a publisher less revenue. A growing media decarbonization strategy on the buy side is to stop buying from publishers that are high carbon emitters.