1 min read
In 2023 and 2024, sustainability gained significant traction within the digital advertising ecosystem. Concepts like carbon footprint became part of everyday conversations among advertisers, agencies, and technology platforms. It seemed like everyone had started to recognize the impact our industry has on the planet.
It became very common to see the word sustainability in news articles, industry publications, and LinkedIn posts. Many digital companies began measuring their carbon footprint, investing in offsetting initiatives, and taking the emissions generated by their operations into account. Tappx was one of the first companies to take this step, starting its measurement and compensation efforts in 2022.
Europe was a pioneer in this area, launching initiatives and preparing a regulatory framework to address an issue that directly impacts something as important as the health of our planet.
This led to the emergence of specific solutions: emissions measurement tools, supply path optimization (SPO), platforms for finding offsetting opportunities, green deals, and more. From awareness, the industry moved into an implementation phase.
There were several key drivers behind this movement, including pressure from major advertisers and advertising holding companies, increasing regulatory focus in Europe, and the reputational need to demonstrate environmental responsibility. However, many of these initiatives remained focused more on measuring and highlighting the problem than on directly integrating sustainability into decision-making processes.
At the same time, something happened that completely changed the picture: the exponential rise of artificial intelligence.
Massive investments in infrastructure and training, AI integration across countless business processes, automation, creative asset generation, optimization, hyper-personalization…
AI arrived like a tsunami, and one of the sectors where its impact has been — and continues to be — most significant is digital advertising.
AI has become the center of every debate, every conversation, every news story, and every industry event. If you don’t have AI, you’re nobody. If you’re not using AI, you’re nobody. If your company isn’t AI-fueled, you’re nobody.
It’s obvious that AI is creating such a massive transformation that we can’t yet fully imagine its medium-term impact — on our lives, our jobs, and everything else. Even in the short term, the impact is already enormous and undeniable.
But it’s also true that strong economic interests are fueling a sense of urgency. There’s also, clearly, a lot of hype surrounding AI. An enormous amount of money has been invested, and now companies are cutting jobs to justify those investments while trying to embed AI into everything possible.
At this point, however, I believe it’s necessary to acknowledge a major reality that often goes unmentioned — largely because it doesn’t make for good PR: AI has significant consequences for the health of our planet.
Among other things, it dramatically increases energy consumption and the amount of water needed to cool data centers.
This is something both companies and individuals need to become aware of. Very few of us understand the resources required to generate a meme of your friend dressed as a mascot, summarize a document, or process huge amounts of data to produce insights and charts. But the reality would likely surprise you.
Unlike sustainability, AI is far more focused on direct and measurable business impact:
Combined with the enormous pressure and economic interests mentioned earlier, this has pushed sustainability into the background in many cases, leaving it out of decision-making processes — as if its impact on our planet were irrelevant.
We are looking the other way, ignoring — or choosing to ignore — that the long-term consequences for the place we live, Earth, could be severe.
Not all regions are approaching this issue in the same way.
While Europe continues advancing sustainability-related regulation (not just in adtech), the United States is taking a far more permissive approach in the name of innovation, essentially giving tech companies free rein to do whatever they want.
The only priority seems to be winning the AI race — the new weapon of our century.
This makes the idea of global frameworks or unified policies unrealistic, at least in the short term.
We’re not talking about the disappearance of sustainability in adtech, but rather a significant decline in its level of priority.
Artificial intelligence is currently the epicenter of the industry, directly impacting business operations, processes, investments, M&A activity, automation, optimization, layoffs, and hiring decisions.
And this frenzy has made us forget that all of this comes at a high environmental cost.
It’s inconvenient, so it often goes unmentioned — but the problem remains.
Over the past two years, the energy consumption associated with data centers and artificial intelligence has shifted from being a marginal issue to becoming one of the main drivers of global electricity demand growth.
Meanwhile, the fight for sustainability continues to evolve, driven mainly by regulation and external pressure in Europe — but far removed from the spotlight and from decision-making tables.
The challenge for the industry in the coming years will be moving beyond measurement toward awareness, visibility, and the real integration of sustainability criteria into decision-making systems — especially in a context where technology-driven energy consumption continues to rise.
A real commitment is needed from users, governments, and companies alike to regulate this new era of artificial intelligence.
If we fail to use resources responsibly and regulate AI in some way, we may face potentially dramatic consequences.
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