A single banner ad produces as much as 7.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per week, according to new research.
Marketing consultancy firm Trinity P3 released audit figures suggesting that the power-hungry infrastructure of the internet means online ads have a greater carbon impact than print ads.
Christopher Sewell, business director at Trinity P3 said advertisers do not understand the significance of the issue.
“Advertisers aren’t in the same league as power plants or cement-making factories or aluminium smelters, but the global impact from advertising is massive,” he said.
The audit revealed that non-targeted banner ads are among the biggest contributors in advertising to carbon emissions, with one un-targeted banner ad emitting more CO2 than a full-page newspaper ad running in five capital cities.
Trinity P3 measured the carbon emitted in the consumption of online adverts plus the impact of the storage and retrieval process.
“We look at the boundary to be measured, so we're talking about the cables, the server farms, the LANs, the WAMs, the internet backbones and the telephone lines - all those things that are involved in the storage and delivery,” he said.
Data used by Trinity P3 came out of the United States from a study conducted by Stanford University into the impact of a banner ad on Yahoo! per million views.
Trinity P3 then applied this in Australia by calculating the carbon emitted by a computer monitor, taking into account screen types - LCD, plasma and rear projection, as well as the amount of time that ad was viewed and the size of the ad being viewed.
“It's more than just the power used by the computer monitor because that data is being stored, so there is a massive process behind saving that data as a view,” he said.
The results come one month after it was revealed that none of Australia’s media trade bodies have formal environmental policies.
At the time, a survey by B&T found that of the seven Australian media industry bodies representing TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor, direct and online, only two have detailed policies, and neither of those have specific targets.
The two bodies directly tackling the issue are those covering direct marketing and outdoor. The Australian Direct Marketing Association released a green blueprint last month which includes guidelines for marketers plus best practice advice on materials and production. And the Outdoor Media Association has produced a sustainability statement designed to guide members.
Charles Berger, director of strategic ideas for the Australian Conservation Foundation, last month called on media bodies to take more direct action, and also to use their lobbying muscle. “It’s really incumbent upon all of our business leaders, including in the media realm, to be making their views known to government,” he said.
