UK digital advertising platform, Ozone, has launched a carbon emission measure called ECOzone, which will calculate the carbon footprint of campaign delivery for activity run through the platform’s managed service capability. It’s the first stage in Ozone’s plan for carbon net zero campaign delivery by 2030, with a short-term aim of providing greater transparency and accountability to agencies and advertisers.

ECOzone measurements will initially focus on the efficiency of Ozone’s platform in delivering premium publisher impressions to advertisers, many of whom are already focused on delivering more carbon-efficient creatives. The metrics will be included in every managed service post-campaign analysis delivered by the business, with a staggered roll out across Q3. A formal launch Q&A session with agency partners is planned for early August.

ECOzone measurements are calculated using actual emissions data collected from Ozone’s cloud partners – Ozone’s primary source of CO2 raw data. A weekly average figure based on the amount of CO2 used to deliver each impression is calculated from a dataset which an independent environmental consultancy, Green Element, is helping Ozone to source and verify. Each campaign is then factored by this amount to give a bespoke CO2 measurement for that activity.

The ECOzone initiative is the first customer-facing activity from Ozone’s work to measure and reduce carbon emissions across its owned platform. In 2022 alone, while the number of bid requests received by Ozone increased three-fold, the average CO2-per-billion bid requests decreased by 52 per cent.

“We’re excited to launch ECOzone to provide a more granular, robust and transparent view of the carbon footprint of Ozone's managed service campaigns,” said Dora Michail-Clendinnen, Chief Strategy Officer at Ozone. “We have deliberately focused on the element of campaign delivery that we have direct control over, to provide advertisers with the reassurance that campaign delivery is as carbon efficient as possible across the premium web.

Creating a more sustainable advertising ecosystem has always been core to Ozone’s existence, and we have long believed that working more directly with publishers or publisher-owned platforms like our own is key to that. We are proud to offer advertisers and agencies a more direct way to reach audiences – responsibly and sustainably – across the premium web, and we believe ECOzone represents a great first step towards a transparent and real-world measure that works for both conscious brands and premium publishers.”