CarbonTag: A Browser-Based Method for Approximating Energy Consumption of Online Ads

TL;DR

This paper introduces CarbonTag, a browser-based method to estimate the energy consumption of online ads, enabling better understanding and optimization of ad energy efficiency to reduce environmental impact.

Contribution

It presents the first approach to measure the energy usage of individual online advertisements during rendering and proposes a classification system for ad energy efficiency.

Findings

First measurement of energy consumption for single online ads

Classification of ads based on energy efficiency levels

Potential for optimizing ad campaigns for lower energy use

Abstract

Energy is today the most critical environmental challenge. The amount of carbon emissions contributing to climate change is significantly influenced by both the production and consumption of energy. Measuring and reducing the energy consumption of services is a crucial step toward reducing adverse environmental effects caused by carbon emissions. Millions of websites rely on online advertisements to generate revenue, with most websites earning most or all of their revenues from ads. As a result, hundreds of billions of online ads are delivered daily to internet users to be rendered in their browsers. Both the delivery and rendering of each ad consume energy. This study investigates how much energy online ads use in the rendering process and offers a way for predicting it as part of rendering the ad. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to calculate the energy usage of single advertisements in the rendering process. Our research further introduces different levels of consumption by which online ads can be classified based on energy efficiency. This classification will allow advertisers to add energy efficiency metrics and optimize campaigns towards consuming less possible.