Cleaning Up Programmatic: Sharethrough, First Ad Exchange to Automatically Remove High-Carbon and Made-for-Advertising Sites

Sharethrough launches Low-Emission private marketplaces, available to all media buyers, removes all Made-for-Advertising sites by default on off-the-shelf deals and custom PMPs. 

Sharethrough, one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges, has announced today two major initiatives that will lower carbon emissions from ad campaigns while providing brands with a cleaner advertising ecosystem: removing Made-for-Advertising (MFA) sites by default, and the availability of Low-Emission private marketplaces (PMPs) at no extra cost for advertisers.

Sharethrough becomes the first ad exchange to remove MFA sites, which are sites created for the purpose of ad arbitrage, from all its off-the-shelf deals and custom PMPs created after July 1, 2023. The company is leveraging Jounce Media data to identify MFA sites and has built filters within its curation platform to remove them. In addition to providing a cleaner, safer and more performant ad ecosystem for advertisers, this initiative from Sharethrough also aims to put pressure on these websites to improve their user and advertiser experience.

“The combination of our measure, reduce, compensate Green Media Product initiative and automatic removal of MFA sites allows advertisers to progress their sustainability and supply path optimization initiatives into what could be called ‘carbon path optimization’,” said JF Cote, CEO at Sharethrough.

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“Sharethrough’s industry-first decision to remove MFA inventory from all auction packages protects buyers from value-extracting inventory and rewards publishers that create high quality ad products,” said Chris Kane, Founder at Jounce Media.

Additionally, Sharethrough has made Low-Emission PMPs available on all Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) at no extra cost. Low-Emission PMPs automatically curate sites and apps by removing the highest emitting media properties. Early data indicates that cutting 10% of the highest-emitting sites can lead to a 20-30% carbon footprint reduction. Sharethrough is also the first ad exchange to leverage Scope3’s Climate Shield.

Sharethrough’s three-step approach, built in partnership with Scope3, first included GreenPMPs™, a solution that enables advertisers to measure and compensate for their campaign’s carbon emissions, becoming the first SSP to offer carbon-neutral media in June 2022. Since then, over 7,700 brands across 37,000 sites have used Sharethrough GreenPMPs™ for display, video, and CTV ads across all devices including desktop, mobile, and TV. Approximately 375,000,000+ grams of CO2 have been compensated from digital advertising campaigns, which is equivalent to the energy required to heat 1,652 U.S. homes for one month.

“We’re crossing the one year mark of improving and scaling Green Media Products with Sharethrough, and we’re excited to push the limits even further with Climate Shield and Low-Emission PMPs which will have a significant impact on helping brands lower emissions from their programmatic campaigns,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO at Scope3.

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