Organisations like Scope3 and ad vendors such as SeenThis have been actively addressing these concerns in the past few years. But what can publishers expect from agencies in terms of advertising sustainability;

• Advertiser Demands: Agencies and brands are already demanding more transparency and accountability around the environmental impact of their campaigns. For example Adform have partnered with Scope3 data across their platforms to help with sustainability measurement practices.
• Governments and industry bodies are recognising the need for sustainability measures in the digital advertising and publishing industry. IAB Tech Lab and AdNet Zero are among some of the organisational bodies looking into sustainability measures for the industry.
• Supply Chain complexity: Programmatic channels such as prebid carry increasing intermediaries that can make it difficult to track and optimise energy use.

It's important to stress that publishers can act, and utilise these best practices;

1. Work with SSPs and vendors who prioritise sustainability - header bidding solutions that are cloud based are a good example of helping clean up programmatic pathways.
2. Lazy loading for images and videos can help with saving energy and bandwidth
3. CDNs are a good way to reduce data transfer distances and a way to improve content load times.

The responsibility for sustainability in digital advertising should not fall solely on publishers. While publishers are accountable for optimizing page performance, the environmental impact of advertising is largely influenced by agencies, creatives, and supply-side platforms (SSPs).

These gatekeepers control ad delivery, targeting, and programmatic processes. Collaboration among publishers, SSPs, agencies, and creatives is essential to build a sustainable digital advertising future and minimize environmental impact.