I used to love tech ads. I'd inspect every ad in BYTE, Creative Computing, etc. I'd even buy Computer Shopper, a massive catalog interrupted by some articles, just for the ads.
Ads can be useful, informative, and engaging. I wouldn't mind that.
Although this study doesn't discuss C02 emissions, it does discuss energy use and the potential impact of internet advertising.
Unfortunately, it only discusses the impact on client-side devices, the energy consumption of hardware used to serve advertisements (networking, servers) is left to a future study.
>Strikingly, uBlock Origin has the potential to save the average global Internet user more than 100 h annually.
>So, for example, the 1.35 × 1010 kWh saved globally for using uBlock Origin is equivalent to more than 1.0% of the electricity generated per year from coal in the United States, which is responsible for the premature deaths of about 52,000 American every year from air pollution [43,44].
>Globally, the results with the most efficient open source ad blocker tested, uBlock Origin, would be even more substantial: ad blocking would save consumers more than $1.8 billion/year.
Where's the outrage from the colossal carbon footprint of the overarching, advertising-based economy? Does anyone have any idea what the electrical costs or carbon footprint per dollar of ad revenue is? It surely must be one of the lowest returns per environmental impact in the entire spectrum of capitalism. Sure, complain about cryptocurrency "setting the earth on fire," but Google gets a free pass for much the same thing to make their trillions?
I can hear the fans on my Windows machine spin up, and I know it's Windows Update time.
Some math with conservative estimates:
* power consumption of mobile processor: 5W
* daily ad use: 1 hour (assume it's 100% cpu for the entire time)
* smartphone users: 7.8 billion (world population)
Total yearly electricity consumption given the above: 2.8 TWh
World electricity consumption: 23,921 TWh in 2019
