MiQ launches sustainable advertising solution to reduce digital ads' carbon footprints

As companies target ways to minimize their carbon footprints and achieve their climate commitments, global programmatic advertising technology company MiQ has launched its sustainable advertising solution in India, powered by partnerships with Scope3 and SeenThis.

Digital advertising is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has been overlooked as a source of significant carbon emissions across its supply chain; however, it relies on millions of servers to host and power ad serving, real-time bidding, data processing, machine learning, and a myriad of related functions. According to Scope3’s Q2 2023 State of Sustainable Advertising report, digital display and streaming ads produce 7.2 million metric tons of emissions every year. Broken out by channel, display advertising accounts for just over half—3.8 million metric tons—and streaming contributes 3.4 million metric tons to the global number.

The company has built a sustainable ads suite to help clients reduce the carbon footprint of their campaigns without sacrificing performance by combining the right insights, tech, creative, and supply strategies. Its granular data from customer campaigns identifies exactly where and when ads run online and is paired with Scope3’s accurate, comprehensive, and independent emissions modelling data for clients to provide MiQ’s proprietary Green Score, helping clients effectively assess, reduce, and offset their carbon emissions.

MiQ’s Commercial Board Member and Managing Director, Siddharth Dabhade said, “By giving marketers comprehensive insights to measure and reduce the carbon impact of their digital campaigns, developing climate-smarter ad creatives, and optimizing the programmatic supply path, we have developed a formidable sustainable advertising solution that would empower climate-conscious brands, agencies and media practitioners to make sustainable media buying choices. More importantly, it enables us to start change-making conversations with brands and media agencies about digital ads that are good for consumers, good for communities, and good for our planet.”

To make digital ads more sustainable, it has partnered with SeenThis, an adaptive streaming technology provider that delivers programmatic creatives with less data waste. These ads stream in bite-sized pieces when in-view, ensuring that data is transferred only when actively consumed by users and is otherwise paused. For MiQ and its clients, this reduces data waste by an average of 25%, as well as associated carbon emissions, all related to excessive buffering and offscreen loading. It also eliminates reliance on publisher bandwidth to download files and improves the overall user experience for static images, video, and other display formats.

Paired with MiQ’s agnostic, multi-DSP optimization tactics and advanced programmatic activation strategies, MiQ and SeenThis have already achieved greener and more performant results for over 100 campaigns to date, including for major fashion houses, tourism brands, and next-gen gaming companies.