Media IS Your Supply Chain

This week, as global attention turns to NYC for Climate Week, leaders, brands, and institutions are speaking about the things we all see: grids, transport, food, energy, buildings. But I want to remind you of another supply chain, less visible yet just as consequential: media. Media is the supply chain by which attention is bought, shaped, and distributed.

When you invest in marketing, your dollars don’t just “reach eyeballs.” They ripple through a complex infrastructure: creatives, data centers, ad exchanges, networks, tracking, and publisher systems. All of it burns energy. All of it generates emissions.

If you don’t treat that chain with care, you risk fueling waste, both financial and climate waste.

The Carbon Cost of Digital Campaigns

Here’s what research shows:

• A single digital ad campaign delivering one million impressions can generate roughly the same carbon emissions as a round-trip flight from Boston to London. The Ecologist

• Programmatic advertising across just five major economies produces ~215,000 metric tons of CO₂ each month, with ~60% coming from ad selection (i.e. decisioning, bidding, matching) in the supply path. scope3.com

• In one modeling exercise of a one-month omnichannel campaign, emissions totaled 323 tons CO₂e; but by applying sustainable best practices, that was reducible, on average, by 32% (down to ~218 tons). Connelly Partners

• Some sources go further: ad tech and digital marketing more broadly might be responsible for 3.5% of global emissions, when you include energy use in data centers, networks, and supporting infrastructure. AdMonsters

• One lesser-known contributor is tracking and third-party scripts: studies show that web tracking increases data transmissions (and thus energy use) by ~21%, resulting in an additional ~11 million tons of GHGs annually. Cornell

In short: the sheer scale of the digital ad ecosystem means even small inefficiencies or waste multiply into large emissions.

Waste, Fraud & Inefficiency: Carbon + Dollars Lost

It’s not just “dirty” in emissions, it’s dirty in effectiveness. When you chase the lowest CPMs without scrutiny, you invite waste.

• Ad fraud is a massive drag. In 2023, ~$84 billion of digital ad spend was lost to fraudulent activity. EMARKETER

• In the U.S. in 2024, about 16.73% of digital ad transactions were affected by fraud. Adweek

• Even beyond overt fraud, inefficiencies haunt campaigns: Google has found ~56% of ad impressions are never actually seen by real humans (i.e. “viewability” gaps). Marketing Evolution

• Many campaigns suffer from misattribution or redundant targeting, meaning large chunks of budget deliver little to no incremental lift. Marketing Evolution

Combine wasted dollars and wasted emissions—and you have a compounding drag on both financial ROI and climate integrity.

Journalism Under Pressure: Why Your Media Dollars Matter More Now

While media (the infrastructure) has carbon and waste risk, media (the institution) is under existential strain.

• Since 2019, advertising revenue for “hard news” content has declined ~33% globally. Barrett Media

• In the U.S., newspaper ad revenues have dropped steadily over decades, both print and digital streams, and the number of journalists employed in newsrooms has shrunk sharply. Brookings

• As newsrooms shrink, investigative staffing, quality reporting, local coverage, and accountability journalism are underpriced or abandoned entirely. Columbia Business School

In an era when media is under political, social, and commercial challenge, ad dollars do more than “reach”: they underwrite truth. Dollars placed on low-cost, low-quality inventory often subsidize noise, misinformation, and aggregated clickbait. Dollars placed directly into trusted journalism help sustain institutions that can hold power to account.

Toward a Better Media Supply Chain: Principles & Tactics

If you accept that media is part of your supply chain, here’s how to act like it:

1. Buy direct, not remnant
   Working directly with quality publishers (or via trusted premium marketplaces) reduces layers of intermediaries, which cuts inefficiencies and “adtech tax.” It also tends to reduce emission overhead embedded in the chain.

2. Measure emissions alongside metrics
   Use carbon-attribution tools (e.g. Scope3, carbon-tagging in media planning) to estimate campaign emissions. One case showed a 32% emissions reduction was possible by applying smarter targeting and leaner creative. Connelly Partners

3. Favor clean, efficient creative
   Avoid needlessly heavy video, auto-play, oversized files, inefficient coding, and excessive tracking. Minimize the “rendering load” of every impression. (Studies like CarbonTag model how to approximate energy consumption of rendering ads in browsers) Cornell

4. Reject bargain CPMs that look too good to be true
   If a placement is extremely cheap, ask: “Why?” Often it’s because fraud, invisibility, or arbitrage is baked in. Always demand transparency, verification, and viewability guarantees.

5. Incentivize long-term value, not short-term volume
   Instead of optimizing solely for CTR, immediate conversions, or lowest cost per click, consider metrics like attention, brand lift, and downstream impact. Lower volume of the right impressions is better than ten times more waste.

6. Prioritize sustainable, trustworthy publishers
   Choose publications and journalism bodies that commit to transparency, fact-checking, editorial independence, and stable business models. Your ad spend becomes a signal, a vote for what kind of media ecosystem you want. Unsure who to invest in? Explore Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart platform which grades media on its bias and reliability.

7. Report on this publicly
   Incorporate media-emissions, media-quality investments, and editorial support into your ESG or sustainability reporting. Make it part of your brand narrative.

Why This Moment Demands It

In a time when climate urgency is accelerating and media institutions are under existential threat, your media budget is a lever. It either compounds damage and disinformation—or it becomes part of the solution.

When media is your supply chain, your ad decisions are not cosmetic; they are infrastructural. They ripple through climate systems, public knowledge, and democratic accountability.

As you plan budgets, projects, and climate pledges during Climate Week (and beyond), ask: Is this campaign part of the problem or part of the solution? Because the chain you build matters both to your bottom line and the planet.