Ozone expands ECOzone programme

Ozone – a UK digital advertising platform built for brands by publishers – has announced the launch of the newest addition to its ECOzone sustainability programme. Aligned with the recently announced GARM Suitability Framework, Ozone says ECOzone for publishers has been designed to provide a holistic view of carbon generated through partners’ header bidding set-ups activated through Ozone.

Ozone says its ECOzone programme is split into two distinct workstreams, transparency and accountability. As part of the transparency workstream, ECOzone for publishers will provide every publisher partner with a view of the amounts of carbon generated through Ozone’s platform, carbon generated by ad partner and a revenue:carbon efficiency metric. This is already available to 19 different publishing groups as part of Ozone’s suite of publisher tools, added the organisation.

Like its sister metric, ECOzone for brands, this report is built on actual carbon data generated from Ozone’s cloud processing. By avoiding the carbon proxy techniques of other measurements, ECOzone for publishers provides actionable data points that allows partners to take more control over their digital advertising set-ups. For example, Ozone says one publisher has been able to reduce the carbon generated per ad request by c.10%, by focusing on reducing the size of their bid requests.

ECOzone for publishers is the latest initiative in Ozone’s plan for carbon net zero campaign delivery by 2030. Since its full roll-out in August 2023, Ozone says the ECOzone for brands metric has been made available in almost 700 post campaign reports, measuring nearly one billion impressions. ECOzone’s accountability workstream has focused on product and engineering initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, and despite business growth in 2023, Ozone says it was able to reduce tCO2e per billion ad requests by -12.7%.

As a member of the Ad Net Zero initiative, Ozone has actively engaged in the development of the GARM Suitability Framework, while at the same time ensuring both ECOzone measures work within this. As the framework continues to evolve, Ozone says it will continue to iterate these measures to provide the transparency, consistency and accuracy that GARM is striving to deliver.

Danny Spears, chief operating officer at Ozone said: “We’re delighted to get ECOzone for Publishers into the hands of our community to provide more controls and levers for them to manage their success in today's ever changing ad landscape. Openly reporting the data points that allow publishers or brands to make their own informed decisions, reinforces the principle of transparency that has always been central to the Ozone proposition. Through this openness, we can help create a more sustainable future – be it for journalism, the digital ecosystem, or as in this case, the environment – something we believe should be an ever-present hygiene factor for our industry’s growth.”