AOP leads by example by adopting image streaming to cut emissions

The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) has become the first trade body to stream images on its website in a bid to cut its internet carbon emissions.

In a four week testing period from 1 March, the AOP integrated technology from adaptive streaming technology company SeenThis on to its website and reduced its data usage by 65%, above original predictions of 40%.

The AOP’s website image load time also improved by 65-85% in the same time period.

These figures would mean the AOP would save 94GB per year and reduce up to 28kg of CO2 per year by switching its images to this streaming technology. This is the equivalent emissions of an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle driving 69.5 miles according to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon calculator.

These calculations depend on website traffic based on a calculation of 1kg of CO2 per 1 GB of data transfer across the internet.

So far this is only through image streaming, but the aim to include video streaming in the near future.

The hope is this will encourage other digital publishers to explore and adopt similar measures in a step towards industry standardisation, specifically around carbon calculation across the buy and sell-side factoring in data transfer emissions.

The AOP has also set up a dedicated Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) steering group for members to share best practice and industry solutions.

Richard Reeves, managing director at AOP, commented: “Understanding the environmental impact of our actions is imperative, so we are delighted we can lead by example through our partnership with SeenThis. The results speak for themselves and we hope this not only encourages other digital publishers to explore similar solutions, but also initiates important conversations in the wider industry. After all, we make the biggest impact when we collaborate and act as one across the entire media ecosystem.”

How does streaming reduce carbon emissions?

Streaming images on websites emits less carbon than downloading because of how data is transferred.

According to a white paper from SeenThis, the Internet represents at least 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions which is on a par with the aviation industry, contributing to the  media industry’s overall emissions.

The Internet’s carbon emissions originate from its complex supply chain transporting data like files, images, video, across five steps: data centres, core network, content delivery networks, access network and end-user devices.

Digital content sent over the Internet (including ads) need all of these components to run on electricity to function, which emits carbon.

SeenThis’ adaptive website streaming technology reduces the overall amount of data transferred across the Internet which equals less energy consumed by each step along this supply chain, resulting in less CO2 being emitted.

A SeenThis spokesperson told The Media Leader its website streaming tech does two things differently to traditional download technology:

1. Its streaming divides every image into several layers and in between each layer it adds a request which allows the tech to pause data load when images go out of screen. In that way, it does not send unnecessary data and reduces data usage, allowing websites to show content faster, as the first image layer “weighs” a lot less than the original image.
2. As the first image segment is a lot smaller than the original image, there is no need to pre-load any data below the fold, compared to “lazy loading techniques” that always download some data below the fold to be ready to display it when it comes in screen. Instead, the technology can load the first layer when the first pixel of the image comes in screen and as a result there is no pre-load of any unnecessary data.

SeenThis estimates that the current Internet carbon emission calculations based on electricity use are “tremendously underestimating the true carbon footprint” because they only consider marginal energy use and not total lifecycle analysis of steel and plastic used to build the Internet.

If publishers and web developers switch from downloading to streaming their website, as an industry we can create massive reductions and change as “the larger the sum of the parts, leads to a greater whole”, a spokesperson said.