
## The Challenge

Encore Digital manages advertising for many of the largest B2B companies in the world, each with strict brand safety and suitability standards. Encore wanted a solution to increase media performance and efficiency by reaching audiences on a wider variety of inventory, such as news and entertainment content, while rigorously avoiding content that is contentious, negative, or otherwise not in line with clients’ suitability requirements.

## The Opportunity

Encore Digital partnered with Scope3 to use Brand Standards for three clients’ campaigns. Unlike traditional verification tools that rely on keyword blocking and struggle to differentiate real vs. fictitious events, Brand Standards uses large language models (LLMs) for a human-like understanding of content and provides full transparency into media decisions, eliminating over-blocking for greater reach and performance.

## The Results

![Results](/marketing/blog/encore-digital-finds-a-new-approach-to-suitability-drives-more-attention-for-b2b-advertisers/image1.webp)

After taking just one week to create and calibrate brand agents with Brand Standards, Encore delivered measurably better engagement for three client campaigns while also improving brand safety, without impacting other media KPIs. With 99% suitability scores and performance gains in attention and viewability, Brand Standards proved its worth as Encore's new competitive advantage for demanding B2B clients.

> "Brand Standards lets us align media with our clients’ values in a far smarter way than blunt keyword lists, eliminating over- and under-blocking. We were able to **deliver stronger engagement and media performance** by focusing investment on the most suitable inventory — without compromise.” <br /><br /> \- Daniel Lewis, Head of Delivery & Product, Encore Digital


After taking just one week to create and calibrate brand agents with Brand Standards, Encore delivered measurably better engagement for three client campaigns while also improving brand safety, without impacting other media KPIs. With 99% suitability scores and performance gains in attention and viewability, Brand Standards proved its worth as Encore's new competitive advantage for demanding B2B clients.

Encore Digital finds a new approach to suitability, drives more attention for B2B advertisers


## **The challenge**

For Butler/Till, ensuring their pharmaceutical client only appeared in brand-safe environments was mission-critical. But traditional brand safety tools were blocking too much, including valuable news content and nuanced but appropriate articles, and missing high-risk content that didn’t match keyword lists. Butler/Till needed a precise, intelligent solution to reduce risk while unlocking reach to key patient audiences.

## The opportunity

Butler/Till constantly seeks innovative tools to improve outcomes for clients. Scope3’s Brand Standards, powered by agentic AI, offered a breakthrough. Unlike rigid verification tools, Brand Standards uses large language models (LLMs) with human-in-the-loop supervision to deeply understand content, opening the door to greater reach and performance.

## The results

![Results](/marketing/blog/reinventing-brand-safety-with-butlertill-first-agency-to-launch-a-scope3-brand-agent/image1.webp)

Butler/Till extended their client's reach to more relevant patients without compromising safety. The campaign’s success highlighted how agentic decisioning can reshape outdated approaches to brand safety and deliver better results, including a **75% reduction** in unique incident rate. As a result, Butler/Till was named an AdExchanger Awards 2025 Finalist in the *Best Use of Technology by an Agency* category.

> *"Brand Standards surpassed our expectations, opening up new opportunities for our clients. We're now empowered to make brand-specific decisions that both protect brand integrity and maximize reach. As technology continues to evolve, Butler/Till is proud to lead the way in advancing brand safety.”* 
-Nick Morticelli, Manager, Strategy & Partnerships, Biddable Media, Butler/Till





For Butler/Till, ensuring their pharmaceutical client only appeared in brand-safe environments was mission-critical. But traditional brand safety tools were blocking too much, including valuable news content and nuanced but appropriate articles, and missing high-risk content that didn’t match keyword lists. Butler/Till needed a precise, intelligent solution to reduce risk while unlocking reach to key patient audiences.

Reinventing Brand Safety with Butler/Till: First Agency to Launch a Scope3 Brand Agent


The rapid adoption of AI will accelerate innovation, but it also presents significant new environmental challenges.

At Scope3, we’ve been considering what this means for the industry and our partners, as well as our role in creating a sustainable advertising ecosystem.

This summer, we took action and are excited to share our efforts. We developed a methodology to measure the carbon footprint and water use of generative AI, which we’ve released for public feedback this week [here](https://preview.methodology.scope3.com/overview).

We also secured $25 million in funding to bolster these initiatives — an investment that will help us advance our mission while tackling the complexities of AI’s environmental impact (read the details in [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/10/scope3-starts-tracking-the-carbon-footprint-of-ai/) or below).

**Want to learn more about what we’re building?** Subscribe to our new Substack, [Sustainable AI](https://sustainableai.substack.com/p/welcome), where we’ll share insights and updates on our journey toward sustainable AI.

---

## **Scope3 Raises $25M in Strategic Funding to Expand into Sustainable AI**

**NEW YORK – 10 October 10 2024**  – Scope3, the collaborative sustainability platform decarbonizing media and advertising, today announced the closing of $25 million in a strategic funding round led by GV. The round included participation from existing investors Venrock, Room40 Ventures, and Craft Ventures, as well as from new investors Aperiam Ventures and Virgo Strategic Investments. The investment will enable Scope3 to expand its work beyond the advertising ecosystem and tackle the pressing climate impact of the booming AI industry.

Since its inception in 2021, Scope3 has been a pioneer in sustainable digital media. Through its ad campaign sustainability solutions and open-source methodology, Scope3 has supplied the media and advertising industries with tools to analyze and reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing ROI, cost or business success. Thousands of brands use Scope3 to measure and decarbonize their media – including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Mastercard, Sanofi, and more – and nearly 3,000 metric tons of carbon emissions have been avoided by using Scope3’s Green Media Products in the last 18 months. 

Decarbonization solutions are gaining serious traction across the industry — usage revenue of Scope3 has grown 12x YoY (Q2 ‘23 → Q2 ‘24). Now, as AI innovation hits an inflection point and the environmental impact is coming to light, Scope3 is taking its proven approach to decarbonizing the advertising and media supply chain and applying it to AI.

At a time when the climate crisis grows more pressing and severe by the day, the rapid adoption of AI is leaving significant environmental repercussions in its wake. The training process for a single AI model consumes thousands of megawatt hours of electricity and emits hundreds of tons of carbon. Companies across the board are increasingly facing pressure to implement AI strategies while trying to meet climate commitments, and they are struggling to find a clear solution to keep emissions under control. With the marketing industry leading the rapid adoption of AI, Scope3 is uniquely positioned to help companies balance their sustainability goals without compromising their AI ambitions that drive innovation and business success.

“AI and the media industry are soon going to be indistinguishable,” said Brian O’Kelley, Co-Founder and CEO of Scope3. “The biggest AI players are monetizing through advertising, just like the search giants before them, and every marketer is using AI to create the content that fuels their campaigns. That’s why extending our methodology to capture the climate impact of AI is imperative, both for our business and the industry as a whole.”

"The most innovative companies in the world are considering sustainable AI practices that address environmental concerns while delivering real business value. Scope3 has the talent, technology, and expertise needed to decarbonize the media and advertising industry," said Erik Nordlander, General Partner at GV.  "We've seen the impact Brian O'Kelley and the Scope3 team have had on the advertising and marketing supply chain, and we're excited to double down on our investment based on the traction we've seen. We're proud to deepen our partnership with Brian and support Scope3's mission as we move toward a more sustainable future."

Alongside the funding, Scope3 released its AI methodology to the public. This methodology sheds light on the digital waste produced by the AI supply chain by precisely tracing and measuring the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of an AI product, process or service. This ultimately enables every company using AI to make data-driven strategies on when, how and where to apply different AI solutions to reduce their carbon footprints and maximize the efficacy of their AI investments.


At a time when the climate crisis grows more pressing and severe by the day, the rapid adoption of AI is leaving significant environmental repercussions in its wake. Scope3 has a plan to tackle it.

Scope3 Expands to Sustainable AI, Releases AI Methodology and Lands $25M in New Funding


A new report by the ANA in partnership with Scope3 explains the carbon cost of digital marketing, the solution to measuring and reducing emissions, and how Fortune 100 brands have already achieved success with those solutions.

Critically, the original data in the report supports the claim that sustainability and growth aren’t at odds. The findings highlight how limiting the waste in your marketing program can be beneficial both for business outcomes and sustainability.

Coca-Cola, GM, Kimberly Clark, Kroger, Mars, and Mondelez used three key approaches to slash their emissions. Adopting green private marketplaces (GMPs) proved to be the most effective, followed by inclusion lists, and then exclusion lists. 

By incorporating sustainability into their media plans, brands reduced emissions as much as 36%. The study also revealed that 2% of media sites account for a whopping 50% of total emissions, underscoring the progress brands can make within days of measuring their emissions by optimizing away from high-emissions sites. As the brands reduced their carbon emissions, they also saw a positive impact on business outcomes. Brands were able to: 

- redistribute spend to high-quality sites
- hit KPIs earlier
- avoid overextending budgets trying to reach users on bad inventory

Download the report to learn more about the scope of the problem, the available solutions, and how simple and quick actions can reduce carbon and lead to greater media efficiency.


A new report by the ANA in partnership with Scope3 explains the carbon cost of digital marketing, the solution to measuring and reducing emissions, and how Fortune 100 brands have already achieved success with those solutions

ANA Releases Report in Partnership with Scope3 on How to Reduce Marketing Emissions While Driving Growth


Not all ads behave in ways that work for advertisers. Many do dubious things, like render off-screen or auto refresh frequently, which is bad both for the marketer and the consumer. These behaviors are therefore also unsustainable.

Ads that fall into this category have largely flown under the radar — and continue to be bought by marketers — because the behaviors are characteristics of individual ad _placements_ that appear on a website, rather than attributes of the full page.

Through a custom web crawler, we have been accumulating data about individual ad placements, including GPIDs, lazy load, auto refresh, and other metadata. In April 2024 we conducted an analysis of that data, using a representative set of ~13.8k domains that included roughly 208k unique placements.

Out of the 13.8k domains analyzed, at least 33% had what we call 'problematic placements.' Our analysis explores the nature of those placements, how they compare to other forms of ad waste and why leveraging placement-level data is a must for marketers.


This analysis explores the nature of problematic placements, how they compare to other forms of ad waste and why leveraging placement-level data is a must for marketers.

Exploring the Impact of Problematic Placements


Last month, the Telegraph [published](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/04/click-farms-social-media-fake-likes-instagram-tiktok/?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-telegraph&utm_content=later-39655896&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio) an investigation into the anatomy of click farms, documenting some of their inner workings – one alarming finding: "as much as half of all internet traffic is fake.” The article also pointed out fake traffic’s impact on both consumers’ perception of popular opinion and the cost to marketers – nearly $100 billion is wasted annually on displaying ads to an audience that doesn't exist!

Beyond the societal and financial damages of bot traffic, how does this behavior impact online advertising’s carbon footprint?

Given what we already know about waste online (there is a strong correlation between things like MFA and high carbon inventory), we conducted our own study to explore the environmental impact of fraudulent fraudulent clicks.

To determine the extent of the climate threat associated with diverse forms of fraud, we partnered with FouAnalytics, a firm that specializes in measuring fraud in ad interactions and overall website activity.

Notably, FouAnalytics is able to identify certain fraudulent practices that remain concealed during routine website inspections, only manifesting when specific codes are embedded in the URL. These mechanisms can result in a surge of additional web requests, inevitably causing increased levels of emissions.

For this study, we utilized a representative sample of 3,024 sites in the US spanning various categories, measuring the presence of fraudulent activity in relation to monthly impression volume and emissions.

![applying a carbon lens to fraud](/marketing/blog/what-is-the-climate-impact-of-click-fraud/image1.webp)

Figure 7 above plots fraudulent activity versus emissions by site, where the size of each dot represents the volume of impressions. The bottom-left region indicates low-fraud, low-emissions inventory – approximately 61% of the inventory (fraud <30%, emissions <200 gCO₂PM). The remaining 39% is waste in the ecosystem. Advertising on sites known for fraud is not worthwhile, especially given the outsized emissions.

Scope3 measures the relationship between emissions and fraud by: grams of gCO₂ per 1,000 non-fraudulent impressions, also referred to as effective gCO₂PM (e-gCO₂PM). For example, if a website emits 100 gCO₂PM and has a fake interaction rate of 25%, the resulting effective emissions would be 150 e-gCO₂PM.

Using that metric, the distribution of emissions pulls higher when fraud is filtered out, with a ~33% higher median e-gCO₂PM: from 127 to 168.7. Additionally, the impression-weighted average increases to 245 e-gCO₂PM, indicating that 21.7% of emissions are associated with fake web activity.

**The biggest takeaway:** Fraud contributes an estimated 353K mt in US programmatic display each year.

![Filtering out fraud](/marketing/blog/what-is-the-climate-impact-of-click-fraud/image2.webp)

Applying this figure to the total emissions associated with US programmatic display (267.8 gCO₂PM, from page 3), the result is that 58.8 grams of CO₂ emissions are wasted on fraud every 1,000 impressions. With an estimated 500B monthly impressions, the estimate is that 352.8k mt of emitted CO₂ is wasted on fraud every year in the US alone.

For more insight into emissions across the digital advertising ecosystem, download the latest State of Sustainable Advertising report [here](https://info.scope3.com/sosa-dec2023).


Given what we already know about waste online (there is a strong correlation between things like MFA and high carbon inventory), Scope3 conducted a study to explore the environmental impact of fraudulent fraudulent clicks

What is the Climate Impact of Click Fraud?


This end-of-year report offers an updated view into where emissions in the digital advertising supply chain exist and how the industry’s carbon footprint continues to evolve. It includes emissions data for an expanded list of countries to provide a comprehensive picture of how carbon output differs across the globe.

The report also provides an analysis of the industry’s current decarbonization trajectory and insights into the potential impact if swift and aggressive action is taken to eliminate climate risk inventory. The results highlight a massive opportunity in the year ahead.

Finally, a special feature on bot traffic explores how emissions data can be used to expose the climate impact of waste that exists in the ad ecosystem.

**Key takeaways**

- For half the countries analyzed, gCO2PM decreased on average 9.3% over six months
- Excluding climate risk inventory would decrease gCO2PM by more than 25% in every country
- Aggressively decreasing emissions from the ad selection process would have a meaningful impact on carbon reduction efforts


This end-of-year report offers an updated view into where emissions in the digital advertising supply chain exist and how the industry’s carbon footprint continues to evolve. It includes emissions data for an expanded list of countries to provide a comprehensive picture of how carbon output differs across the globe.

The State of Sustainable Advertising: December 2023


Emissions data and insights are helping stakeholders across digital advertising establish a better understanding of the industry’s overall impact on the planet.

This quarter’s report provides updated industry benchmarks and a more comprehensive estimate of digital ad emissions. Developments from the last report include refinements to the Scope3 emissions model and expansion of the data set to include more countries and channels.

Beyond updated benchmarks, the report explores new data around the presence of climate risk, along with the impact it has on advertiser campaigns if blocked. The impression-level and market-specific insights, as well as real campaign performance data, offer marketers, publishers and technology providers additional insight into where opportunities exist to reduce emissions.

As the industry moves to adopt more sustainable business practices, it’s also important to understand how optimizing toward lower emissions might influence a marketer’s ability to balance other key metrics, like performance, attention and privacy. This installment of the report includes an analysis of the intersection between emissions and these dimensions using data from industry leading attention and privacy data sources.

Key findings include:

- **Streaming brings digital ad emissions to 7.2M metric tons annually.** A year of digital advertising (streaming + display) emissions are the same as 1.4 M US homes’ electricity usage yearly.
- **Reduction strategies will need to be channel specific.** Measurement of every channel highlights the nuances that exist in the emissions of different types of advertising.
- **Climate risk inventory is costing marketers.** Emissions from climate risk inventory are on average 2 times higher than the market average, while underperforming by 13%.
- **It’s possible for marketers to have it all.** There’s a 36% overlap between ‘green inventory’ and inventory that’s high performing, high attention and privacy compliant.

For an explanation of the report findings, join our webinar on 7 September at 10am ET / 3pm BST — [register now](https://events.scope3.com/sustainableadsQ2).


This quarter’s report provides updated industry benchmarks and a more comprehensive estimate of digital ad emissions. 

The State of Sustainable Advertising: Q2 2023


_Scope3’s landmark State of Sustainable Advertising Report finds the worst-performing 10% of web domains account for more than 33,500 metric tones of CO₂e every month_

NEW YORK CITY — 19 APRIL 2023 — The programmatic advertising industry produces more than 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions in a single month across five leading economies, the equivalent to more than 24 million gallons of gasoline being consumed. That’s according to Scope3’s ‘[Q1 2023 State of Sustainable Advertising](https://scope3.com/learn/research/the-state-of-sustainable-advertising-q2-2023)’ report, providing the most comprehensive data ever compiled on the digital advertising sector’s carbon footprint.

The landmark report, covering the USA, the UK, Australia, Germany, and France provides first-of-its-kind benchmarking data to power significant progress on the sustainability movement in advertising, and providing guidelines for modeling emissions and informing carbon reduction strategies.

Scope3, founded in 2022 by ad tech industry veterans is on a mission to decarbonize media and advertising and has built partnerships across the industry to raise awareness and take action across the industry: if the industry were to eliminate spending across the highest emitting domains for carbon emissions in these regions, more than 33.5K metric tons of carbon can be removed each and every month.

“This report is a crucial moment for the industry to pause and consider how we come together to tackle the climate emergency,” said Anne Coghlan, Co-Founder and COO at Scope3. “We are striving for a more effective advertising industry with the least impact on the environment, something that can only be achieved by industry collaboration, using the right data and taking action now. For the first time, we know where to take action to deliver the most immediate impact.”

**Key findings of the paper include:**

- 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions are produced every month across the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia
- ‘Climate Risk’ websites have emissions as much as twice the industry average — eliminating spend on these sites can save 33.5k mt of CO₂e each month (the equivalent to 3,449 road trips around planet earth)
- The majority (60%) of carbon generated by the programmatic advertising comes from ‘ad selection emissions’ and can be attributed to the notoriously complex supply chain

“By changing the way we configure the trillions of auctions that match advertisers with ad placements, we can dramatically reduce the energy consumption of the process,” said Brian O’Kelley, Co-Founder and CEO at Scope3. “And, in doing so, we improve transparency, reduce privacy risk, and increase the proportion of spend in working media, without adverse revenue impact for publishers and no adverse performance or reach impact for buyers.”

Scope3 is now partnering with companies across the industry to harness this data to drive meaningful reduction strategies. Earlier this month, [Insider, Inc.](https://www.insider-inc.com/news/archive/2023/insider-first-publisher-scope3-assessment) shared promising results following its publisher assessment by Scope3. After implementing recommendations from Scope3, the media company measurably reduced its carbon emissions from the beginning of the year.

To download the report, visit the Scope3 website [here](https://info.scope3.com/hubfs/Content%20Downloads%20-%20Gated/2023/Scope3%20State%20of%20Sustainable%20Advertising%20Report%202023%20(2).pdf), and to hear a deep-dive into the findings of the report and implications for the industry, join the webinar taking place on 23 May at 10am ET / 3pm BST — [register now](https://events.scope3.com/sustainableads).

**Report Methodology**

For the data behind this report, we have used a representative sample drawn from the Scope3 API query logs, and the data was pulled on 15 April 2023. The sample is primarily focused on data regarding players in the programmatic space, inclusive of the long tail, and it represents billions of impressions across tens of thousands of domains/apps on desktop and mobile. The figures include video and banner ads.

With this data, we assess overall ad tech market emissions trends across three emission categories (ad selection, media distribution, and creative distribution). The normalized unit used for the report is grams of CO₂ per thousand impressions (gCO₂PM), and the benchmark values derived are weighted averages of the emission activity we see across the domains and apps active in that specific market.

We use a third-party data source in BIScience to assess total emissions values for a given market, as well as for validation purposes against our datasets. BIScience provides all impression activity data for the top websites and apps across a variety of geos.

Scope3 works with deepsee to provide the made-for-advertising signal.


Scope3’s landmark State of Sustainable Advertising Report finds the worst-performing 10% of web domains account for more than 33,500 metric tones of CO₂e every month

Scope3 Report: Programmatic advertising generates 215,000 metric tons of carbon emissions each month across five major global economies


Ebiquity and Scope3 today released a new report exposing the extraordinary cost of excessive supply chain waste in digital advertising and its impact on the environment.

The joint study analyzed more than $375M of digital advertising spend across 116bn display ad impressions from 43 brand advertisers and revealed that 15.3% of their advertising spend is wasted on inventory that generates no value to their business while generating excessive amounts of CO₂ emissions.

The report also marks the first time that Scope3 has released global industry benchmarks using its carbon emissions measurement data, providing brands a baseline for comparison and understanding of the relative performance and cost of carbon associated with their advertising investments.

Key findings from the study include:

- **Carbon emissions of websites varies dramatically with CO₂PM per website ranging from 55.2g to 4,782.8g, an 87X difference.** This confirms a major opportunity for brands to prioritize media partners with optimized emissions.
- **The global weighted average of digital ad emissions is 670g CO₂PM based on 116bn ad impressions.** According to Scope3 data of 77,826 MtCO₂e, this is the equivalent of flying 1.35 million passengers from London to Paris – it would take 3.7 million fully-grown trees one year to absorb this amount of carbon.
- **‘Made for Advertising’ (MFA) websites are high contributors to carbon emissions while providing no value to brands.** CO₂PM on MFA websites, classified as wastage by Ebiquity, is 26.4% HIGHER than non-MFA websites. Of all US spend analyzed by Ebiquity, 15.3% was wasted on MFA inventory.
- **Reallocating investment to high quality journalism can boost ad effectiveness and lower emissions.** CO₂PM on ‘Trusted News Websites’ is 52% LOWER than on MFA websites, creating a strong case for brands to cease wasteful MFA spend.

“Being able to put real numbers against the carbon emissions of digital advertising is just the beginning of a long journey to driving real change across the industry,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO of Scope3. “These metrics highlight that all digital advertising isn’t equal. The wide range of emissions presents a clear opportunity for the industry to make better decisions. Brands now have a guide for what to look for and how they can begin to think about reduction and optimization for more effective and carbon-neutral advertising.”

“This study demonstrates that the advertising industry is now able to quantify CO₂ emissions across websites, markets and categories of media. We believe CO₂PM should be adopted immediately as a core metric to influence decision-making and lead technology and media partners to optimize for sustainability,” said Nick Waters, Group CEO at Ebiquity Plc. “The most striking insight is that brands in the sample spent 15.3% of their budget on Made For Advertising inventory which has no value.”

Waters continued, “Instead, this money could have been invested on high quality news websites, delivering high ad effectiveness in a brand safe environment, whilst supporting quality journalism, and emitting less than half of the CO₂e. By acting together, we can reduce the harmful impact our industry has on the planet.”

Scope3 and Ebiquity plan to conduct additional studies and release benchmarks in 2023 for more advertising channels, including connected TV and social media platforms.

A webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, 10 January at 11am EST (4pm GMT) where Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley and Ebiquity Group Chief Product Officer Ruben Schreurs will present the full findings and recommendations. Register [here](https://ebiquity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_46ou4Z-4)


Ebiquity and Scope3 today released a new report exposing the extraordinary cost of excessive supply chain waste in digital advertising and its impact on the environment.