The amount of digital waste produced by the marketing and advertising sector is equivalent to the global C02 emissions from the aviation industry – between 2 – 2.5% of all emissions.
The survey, which was conducted by Investis digital on behalf of Forrester Consulting, found that businesses were wasting more digitally-generated carbon than they needed to due to ongoing inefficiencies and lack of connected framework.
According to the research, 47% of marketers agreed that poorly used marketing and advertising tech platform waste time, money – ultimately leading to more digital waste, higher energy consumption and greater carbon emissions.
In addition, only 17% of companies said that their technologies work together well. The key reasons for the polluting inefficiency include marketing tech stacks becoming increasingly complicated, resulting in strategic inefficiencies that create wasteful duplication.
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According to research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a single data centre can consume the equivalent electricity of 5,000 homes.
In addition to inefficient data trackers and systems, each email sent is equivalent to one gram of carbon emissions, while internet searches and streaming also have a significant impact.
Investis Digital (iDX) Global CEO Myles Peacock said: “In the continuous attempt to evolve digital strategies, businesses are pouring significant amounts of money and overhead into MarTech, AdTech, content and people.
“But they lack the correct governance and overarching connected content framework to join everything together, creating significant waste throughout the ecosystem, as well as mixed end results.”
He continued: “The issue will only get more serious without solid foundations being established, particularly as the industry experiences a meaningful uptake of AI. Forecasts suggest that businesses will spend an astounding $4.7 trillion on marketing by 2025, with one-quarter of that spend going to MarTech specifically.”
“Marketing and communications only work when they’re seen by the audiences that need to see them, and then acted upon. The rest is pollution.”
