Building a More Efficient and Effective Advertising Supply Chain
A thriving open internet must be built on a responsible foundation. We measure our global carbon footprint annually to assess the progress of our long-term environmental sustainability strategy. We are excited to share the results in our 2023 sustainability snapshot.
At PubMatic, we believe that environmental sustainability is essential to building digital advertising’s supply chain of the future. By leveraging carbon impact as a key metric in decision-making, we integrate sustainability into our technology and operations at both the company and partner level. Our commitment to sustainability ensures our goal of building a more efficient and effective advertising supply chain benefits both our partners and the planet.
We analyze our global carbon footprint analysis per the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, and with the climate and media experts at 51 to Carbon Zero, covering:
Digital advertising is a high volume, data-rich and energy-intensive industry so prioritizing the environmental sustainability of our data centers has been our top priority. We saw a steep decline in scope 3 emissions from our data centers, as our 2022 footprint included hardware purchases for two new data centers in Singapore and Tokyo, both of which opened in 2023.
We are committed to offsetting 100% of the energy consumed from our data center operations with renewable energy. Initially, the new APAC data centers did not offer renewable energy credits leading to an increase in our 2023 purchased electricity emissions. However, by utilizing renewable energy at our other owned and operated data centers, PubMatic avoided emitting over 24,500 tCO2e into the atmosphere in 2023. Additionally, over the past 12 months, we have collaborated closely with our colocation providers and are proud to share that we have achieved our 100% renewable target for 2024.
By prioritizing sustainable business operations, we have achieved long-term growth while minimizing environmental impact. In 2023, our business operations returned to post-pandemic norms, impacting the carbon emissions we recorded.
As global teams resumed more in-person engagements, including PubMatic’s first global sales kickoff meeting since January 2020 and attending customer-related meetings and events, business travel emissions increased. Additionally, slight increases in the absolute emissions of other categories were recorded as our team grew 8% YOY.
We also updated our measurement methodology to align with the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) recommendations, now including a broader category of purchased goods and services, which is the reason for some of the figure changes from our last published report. This new approach will be used to measure our future emissions.
PubMatic is committed to sustainability and setting short-term and net zero goals, which are currently in review with the SBTi. Despite emissions increases from purchased energy at our two new APAC data centers and a return to in-person engagement across our business operations, our overall company carbon emissions went down by 37% year-over-year. We anticipate further reductions in 2024 by engaging our data center colocation providers globally to adopt 100% renewable energy.
Operational efficiency is a core tenet of PubMatic’s growth strategy, and environmental sustainability is a natural extension of our efforts. What’s more, clients, partners and employees are increasingly factoring sustainability as they decide who to work with and for. We are committed to partnering closely with our peers across the digital advertising ecosystem to decarbonize our industry and build a better advertising supply chain on the open internet.
51 to Carbon Zero assessed our business operations in alignment with the GHG Protocol reporting standards. We followed an Operational Control approach and reported on everything PubMatic has complete authority to create and apply operating policies. The analysis included the following categories:
Note small changes have been made to the 2022 footprint to align with SBTi criteria included adding upstream emissions of energy usage in scope 3, and re-classifying IT equipment as capital goods.