GroupM and SeenThis partnership dodge over 230 tonnes of carbon emissions

WPP’s media investment group GroupM has fully integrated SeenThis’ adaptive streaming technology into its carbon calculator tool.

The collaboration, which began in 2023, has enabled GroupM and its agencies to leverage SeenThis’ expertise and proprietary technology to manage and minimise carbon emissions while improving the performance of display advertising campaigns, it said in a statement. 

In the last year, the global partnership has helped to avoid over 230 tonnes of CO2e emissions, the equivalent of charging more than 15 million smartphones. Around 260 GroupM advertisers across 28 markets have benefitted from their access to the technology,
whilst simultaneously driving the improved performance of their digital ads.

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By reducing data waste, where data is only transferred for creative assets that are visible, SeenThis technology helps to increase the attention of the user meaning fewer impressions are required to meet targets. It also minimises CO2e emissions, as each part of the internet supply chain requires energy to operate.

Using SeenThis technology, a recent campaign for UOB, a leading bank in Asia, was able to reduce data consumption by 25% and increase the view-through rate by 245%, a testament to the effectiveness of precision targeting and performance optimisation efforts, it said. 

The proprietary technology has been seamlessly integrated into GroupM’s carbon calculator, allowing all GroupM advertisers to assess the optimisation impact when using SeenThis in pre-campaign planning.

This demonstrates GroupM’s ability to turn trials into repeatable
successes and create scalable processes. Growing industry interest and the desire for a common measuring framework are also helping to drive this. The focus in the near term is to convert successful trials and tests into always-on components of campaigns, as this technology has proven to drive meaningful business outcomes whilst reducing carbon intensity, it said. 

"In 2023 we set out in partnership with SeenThis to minimise emissions using data from our partners. One year on, we are achieving what we said we would do, building on our global framework for media decarbonisation," said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM.

"The success of this partnership marks an important step in our commitment to decarbonise our media supply chain, and the more advertisers opt into SeenThis, the more they can drive positive results across both emissions and performance,” Taylor added. 

“Our partnership is one of the first examples of a vendor providing an immediate turn-key solution to enable GroupM to deliver CO2e reductions while enhancing the user experience. We’re thrilled that GroupM is focused on the combination of minimising emissions while maximising performance and is embracing the use of SeenThis data to share this insight with their advertisers to encourage lower carbon cost of business outcomes,” said Thomas Bowens, global agency director at SeenThis. 

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