Green KPIs for the win: How Microsoft Invest helps brands lowering carbon emissions

The advertising industry, like all other industries around the globe, is trying to find ways to reduce its carbon footprint impact. RelevanC, a retail tech pioneer that helps retailers turn everyday transaction data into valuable business insights, was asked by their CPG brand client to reduce the carbon emission of their digital campaigns.

This is why RelevanC partnered with Microsoft Advertising, GreenMetrics and Impact+, to lower the carbon impact of digital campaigns while maintaining a similar level of ad performance.

RelevanC leveraged Microsoft Invest DSP (Powered by Xandr) and two integrated partners (GreenMetrics and Impact+) to make some A/B testing with and without low carbon emission optimization:

• Wi-Fi versus Edge connections.
• Device (desktop vs mobile).
• GreenMetrics curated deal targeting low carbon emission websites.
• Prebid viewability threshold to avoid not viewable impressions.
• Optimized capping to reduce overexposure.

GreenMetrics measured the carbon emission of websites (through curated deals), and Impact+ evaluated the carbon emissions of the campaign.

The carbon impact of digital campaigns has become a major issue for brands and is now as important as more traditional digital media key performance indicators (KPIs).

Thanks to Microsoft Invest (powered by Xandr) and the partners integrated into the demand-side platform (DSP), the RelevanC trading team was able to significantly reduce the electricity consumption and GEF emissions of the campaigns while maintaining a similar level of performance, and sometimes even better.

— Paula Alves, Head of Operations at RelevanC

• Green KPIs between waves 1 and 2: Power consumption (in kWh) divided by 8.2 for IAB formats and divided by 6.6 for video and GEF emission (in kgCO2eq), divided by 10 for IAB formats and 6.8 for video.
• Media KPIs between waves 1 and 2 has shown a X9 CTR on IAB formats.
• Viewability rate (-2%) / Completion rate (-4%) were nearly equivalent on video formats.