Meet 6 companies helping advertisers like Pepsi and Microsoft clean up their carbon footprint

• Brands are increasingly looking to track the environmental emissions created from advertising.
• New sustainability-minded startups are calculating the carbon footprint of data-driven advertising.
• Insider identified six firms leading the push into sustainability for advertising.

While digital advertising isn’t nearly as big a polluter as other industries like manufacturing, big brands are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint anywhere they can.

Sustainability is quickly becoming a priority for corporations to court the next generation of consumers and avoid “greenwashing” backlash. Eighty-eight percent of Gen Z consumers surveyed said that they will decrease their spending with brands that don’t meet sustainability requirements, according to data from Adobe.

Companies are now working with a new group of adtech startups that specialize in calculating carbon data and finding ways for advertisers to invest in more sustainable practices and campaigns.

Some of these startups, like Scope3 and Good-Loop, have gotten investment dollars in a tough fundraising environment by convincing investors about the long-term importance of sustainability in the digital ad industry. Others are not-for-profit initiatives spearheaded by trade organizations.

These firms are taking on challenges like reducing the carbon footprint of production shoots or replacing decades of adtech infrastructure that powers billions of spend across the open web. They promise not only to help marketers produce less greenhouse gases, they also claim to help digital ads load faster, cut down on ad fraud, and help premium publishers increase ad prices.

Not everyone in the industry fully buys into what these firms are selling, however, because advertisers can’t verify the methodology behind the sustainability claims.

“There’s a bit of sustainability Wild West going on with people making claims,” said Ben Riley, general manager of adtech firm SeenThis. 

Insider identified six firms driving the push into sustainability for advertisers, using our own reporting and recommendations from experts in the industry.