Prevent Problematic Placements with GMP+

A message from Brian O’Kelley, CEO

For almost three years, I've been seeing the internet through a sustainability lens. Things that used to annoy me now seem like an unacceptable waste of energy in a warming world. For instance, why do we have ads that auto-refresh every 10 seconds? Why is it ok to render an ad outside the viewable area of a webpage? These problematic ad placements don't create value for advertisers and are fundamentally unsustainable.

The reason these problematic placements exist is largely because the industry tends to use inclusion and exclusion lists at the domain level, and have no way to block a specific placement. In addition, each ad tech company has had its own identifier for each placement, making it impossible to even speak the same language across the supply chain.

Over the past year, my team at Scope3 has been building a data platform that uses the IAB Tech Lab standard for a Global Placement ID (GPID) to identify placements — the first platform to do so. We rebuilt our emissions model to operate per-placement, increasing accuracy significantly. We also built a database of placement behaviors like refresh rate and lazy loading. Finally, we built a set of Inventory Intelligence APIs that could use to integrate this data into ad tech platforms.

The result of all of this work is our launch today of GMP+, a standardized media product that blocks climate risk - problematic placements, high-emissions, and made-for-advertising inventory - more granularly and effectively than anything before. Using GMP+ improves ROAS and reduces emissions, making it an efficient and sustainable foundation for brand and performance marketplaces.

Our GMP+ launch partner, Sharethrough, has been a consistent industry leader in sustainability innovation. Together we're excited to start rolling out these new capabilities to advertisers over the upcoming weeks. When you can have greener ads that work better, why buy media any other way?

Read more details about GMP+ in the official press release:

Scope3 introduces GMP+, industry’s first product to prevent problematic placements; Sharethrough to launch today

Identifying and blocking wasteful placements improves performance and significantly reduces carbon emissions.

11 April 2024 — NEW YORK — Scope3, the market leader in sustainable advertising, introduced GMP+, a standardized media offering that will protect advertisers from problematic placements. Examples of problematic placements include ads that load outside the viewable area of the browser and ads that reload frequently.

These practices are unsustainable because every ad that loads uses significant electricity to hold real-time auctions across thousands of bidders. Additionally, these practices are harmful to advertisers because consumers never see ads that load off-screen or ignore those that reload quickly, wasting both money and carbon.

GMP+ is the industry’s first to use placement as the foundation, made possible due to broad adoption of the recent Global Placement ID (GPID) standard.

“We’ve been talking for years about problematic placements and their negative impact on advertisers and the environment,” said Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley. “With the launch of GMP+, we have the technological capability to protect advertisers, consumers, and the planet from these unsustainable practices.”

Kyle Vidasolo, President of Outcomes at Omnicom Media Group US said, “GMP+ is at the crossroads of efficiency, performance, and sustainability, all critical aspects of media investment today. This kind of innovation will drive better results for brands and advertisers while promoting a better, more sustainable ecosystem, which needs to be the new standard for our industry.”

Sharethrough, the industry’s leading sustainable advertising ecosystem, is the first to bring GMP+ to its customers.

“We launched Sharethrough GreenPMPs two years ago in partnership with Scope3 with the objective of decarbonizing digital advertising and it has already been widely adopted by over 10,000 brands. GreenPMP+ allows us to take a step further in improving performance and making advertising more sustainable. It’s pretty much a no-brainer for our clients—who doesn’t want better performance and a greener planet?” said Sharethrough CMO Benoit Skinazi.

Like standard Green Media Products (GMPs), GMP+ also blocks made for advertising (MFA) websites and leverages the Scope3 emissions model to block high carbon inventory.