Greener advertising choices through more refined tracking: Broadsign partners with the sustainability platform Scope 3 to provide a precise and comprehensive CO2 footprint calculation for DooH campaigns.
When it comes to green software, Broadsign is considered a leader in the digital signage industry. CEO Burr Smith focused on sustainability at Broadsign when the industry was still largely focused on cost, often choosing cheap data centers with diesel generators, and operating DooH screens at night with black content.
You can’t optimize what you can’t measure
Broadsign was one of the first CMS providers to adopt the Green Software Initiative from Microsoft, Google, and others. Since then, the company has only used data centers powered by renewable energy. Additionally, the software platforms have been improved to minimize the amount of data transferred from the cloud to each individual Broadsign player.
Broadsign is now taking the next step to help customers optimize the carbon footprint of digital out-of-home campaigns. Following the motto “You can’t optimize what you can’t measure,” Broadsign has partnered with Scope 3, the US industry standard for CO2 campaign measurement.
The new partnership enables more accurate and comprehensive CO2 modeling of DooH campaigns, allowing for comparison with other media types. As more advertisers seek to reduce CO2 emissions in their businesses, including marketing efforts, this partnership helps support those goals.
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Emission values from over 1 million DooH screens.
The Scope 3 service allows advertisers to calculate the exact CO2 footprint of DooH networks. Broadsign has gathered emissions data from its customers and integrated it into the Scope 3 platform. The database now includes emissions data from over one million DooH screens worldwide. The key performance indicator (KPI) is the average CO2 value per impression for DooH screens.
Scope 3 users can view and compare the carbon footprint of DooH impressions with other media channels, such as online, mobile, social media, and connected TV. This enables CO2-optimized media planning and the generation of reports with just a click.
The greenest of all media
DooH is genuinely viewed to be a performance enhancer for omnichannel campaigns. Now, data from Scope 3 and Broadsign shows that no other medium offers higher CO2 efficiency per impression than DooH.
Key findings based on the data collected by Scope 3 and Broadsign include:
- DooH has the lowest CO2 emissions per impression compared to other media types.
- The main source of CO2 emissions from DooH comes from the energy consumption of the screens. Key factors include operating times, brightness settings, and the power grid mix.
- Around 95 percent of the DooH screens surveyed by Broadsign are below or at the medium emission level.
- Using low-emission DooH screens and optimizing campaigns for specific times of day helps advertisers reduce emissions, as certain time slots may benefit from a more sustainable energy mix or higher frequency.
DooH screens often seen as energy guzzlers
The biggest challenge is the public perception that DooH is a high-emission channel. Unlike mobile, online, or TV, the DooH infrastructure is visible in public spaces, making its energy consumption more noticeable. In contrast, the large energy use of data centers in other media types is not as visible to consumers. This is why the DooH industry must work especially hard to raise awareness, particularly among media buyers and advertisers.
Broadsign and Scope 3 view the initial CO2 modeling for DooH campaigns as just the beginning. In the future, dynamic campaign planning and real-time adjustments to media plans based on CO2 intensity will be possible.
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Broadsign’s sustainability initiatives are no coincidence. The rise of programmatic DooH has significantly increased the CO2 footprint. Instead of a single campaign motif for thousands of screens, hyperlocal, individualized creations are now often developed and need to be transferred individually from the cloud to each endpoint.
In the past, it was sufficient to transmit a loop with six campaign motifs once a week; today, it can be dozens of motifs per day, and in extreme cases, many more per week. Video-based campaigns with near-real-time creations, such as those for major sporting events, also generate massive amounts of data to be transmitted. Event streaming, while still rare in the DACH region, also contributes to this data load.
Whether for classic DooH or programmatic, a reliable method of calculating the CO2 footprint is essential. DooH must be compared with other media types in a transparent, independent, and automated way, starting from the booking stage. True to the motto, “You can’t fix what you can’t measure.”
