March 2023 Emissions Model

This release includes seller-specific emissions models and multiple improvements to supply graph accuracy (ad block and syndication detection, masked domain adjustments, sellers.json updates, EMX removal). The overall impact of these updates is a decline in modeled emissions for most properties.

Differentiate dedicated placements

If an ad network has a dedicated placement (for instance, Teads in-article), we will treat this as a separate decisioning process. This would remove the ad network from the unified auction, generally reducing the carbon footprint of the page as a whole as well as the ad network when specified as the seller of an impression.

Detect content syndication

Some publishers have content syndication deals where they include third-party content and ads inside their pages (for instance, MSN includes CBS Interactive content and ads on some pages). We now detect content syndication rows in ads.txt files and treat them as distinct tags from a decisioning perspective.

Remove EMX

EMX declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. Though they may resume at some point, we have removed them from the supply graph for the time being.

Initial adblock support

Many publishers have a separate configuration to recover revenue when users have ad blocking turned on. We now detect ad recovery providers (Blockthrough, AAX, etc) and treat them as a separate auction. In the future we may break out ad block as a separate measurement.

Show always-on compensation

Some companies (GoodNet, Picnic) compensate for 100% of their emissions. We now show compensated emissions and the compensation provider in the measurement response.

Defaults for masked and ad server domains

A significant portion of the domains we see in API calls are from ad servers (ad.doubleclick.net) or masked by sellers (microsoftadvertising.com). When we see these domains we will now identify them as non-transparent and return the 80th percentile benchmark for the channel/country as a proxy for the inventory that is likely behind the mask. This protects buyers from non-transparency being used as a mechanism to hide high-carbon inventory.

Deactivate nodes with missing sellers.json entries

In prior releases, we conservatively assumed that a mismatch between ads.txt and sellers.json could be inadvertent due to typos or other issues. We have now done a systematic analysis and are comfortable treating many of these cases as intentional removal - for instance, when we see the sellers.json row in one scan and then see it disappear in a future scan. We are also contacting SSPs and publishers to fix some of the issues we've seen that look like mistakes.