Alma Spotlight – Daniil Ivanov, Tulos Helsinki:
The Carbon Footprint of Advertising is the Hottest Topic Right Now!

First in the Alma spotlight is Daniil Ivanov from Tulos. Let’s have Daniil share his thoughts on topics like the carbon footprint of advertising, the deprecation of cookies, and artificial intelligence in his own words! And let’s find out who are the digital marketing professionals he wants to thank throughout his career.

I’m Daniil, a reliable and approachable marketing expert from our neighboring country, Estonia. I work at the results-driven marketing agency Tulos, where I’ve been for 2 years, and currently occupy there a senior consulting position. I’ve been around programmatic for over 5 years in total.

I engage in a variety of activities in digital marketing. Whether it’s client work, evaluation of internal commercial models, or managing external and internal partners for programmatic advertising. And hey, sometimes I even create banners—so I have a very diverse range of tasks!

The Carbon Footprint of Advertising is the Hottest Topic in the Field Right Now!

Digital advertising contributes significantly to carbon dioxide emissions. That’s why the carbon footprint of advertising—especially in programmatic advertising—is the hottest topic right now.

Many believe that the use of internet doesn’t leave a carbon footprint, but that’s not true. The main sources of emissions in advertisement are ad waste, inefficiencies in the programmatic framework, ad production, data transfer for ad rendering, and domain inefficiency.  From a sustainable future perspective, emissions from the internet and digital advertising matters and should be addressed as powerfully as supply chain inefficiencies.  There have been numerous discussions about this, both on a Nordic level and recently also in Finland.

Practical Solutions Have Started to Appear

Fortunately, practical solutions are starting to emerge. For instance, working closely with SeenThis I use their proprietary technology of adaptive streaming to tackle the emission created by data waste for the creative. Additionally, Adform has partnered with Scope3 to address the same issue but from their own unique perspective. Key here is placing ads on responsible and efficient websites, and constantly filtering out sites that generate high emissions.

Also, it’s fantastic to hear that Alma now offers a carbon footprint calculation of digital campaigns. That’s future-proof thinking!

One of my recent cases is with Heineken Group’s Sol Beer. Sol Beer has been producing a large portion of its beers in The Netherlands in Zoeterwoude Brewery with renewable energy -solar power. Heinekens’ sustainability ambition for 2030 named “Brew a Better World” would benefit from these types of local initiatives we have just discussed, as a matter of fact, I have already implemented them. I’ll be co-producing a case study with both SeenThis and Adform for this client.

The Deprecation of Cookies also Brings New Opportunities

The deprecation of cookies brings both positive and negative aspects, as well as new opportunities. Cookie-based technology has provided convenience for targeting, and we’ve become so reliant on it that we’ve forgotten more innovative ways of targeting. Do we still understand how customers buy products and engage with brands? Are we not overwhelming audiences with cookie-based advertising, causing them to lose trust in brands?

The removal of cookies also brings opportunities to build new trust relationships with the end-users. Brands that leverage content and contexts can grow more trust with their target audiences.

The Renaissance of Targeting?

The deprecation of third-party cookies makes it much harder for advertisers to track users across the web and serve them targeted ads as well as attribute and measure channels’ success. This is said to lead to “less effective” advertising.

However, the future isn’t so bleak, as a lot of work is being done on alternative solutions, like ID-based applications. ID matching solutions could unify different identifiers into a single recognizable ID, helping publishers and advertisers make sense of vast sea of identifiers.

This change has also led to closer data collaboration with publishers. I see a renaissance of alternative targeting solutions in the future, methods based on context, content, tags, or keyword targeting. Utilizing you first-party data, for instance, your CRM systems, is also crucial for the future of targeting. Get serious with your CDPs and DMPs.

Finland Lagging Behind Other Nordic Countries

In my view, Finland is taking its time in adapting to the cookieless era if we compare it to the other Nordic countries. We either build things slower with more suspicion or focus on strong, long-lasting solutions for future success.

Meanwhile, Google keeps postponing the “doomsday,” leaving us all developing selected mix of technologies somewhat blindly. Advertising publishers are also addressing the challenge based on their own business objectives and beliefs. It will take time to come to the unified and all-agreeing practices.

Preparing for the Deprecation of Cookies

There are actions advertisers can take to prepare for the deprecation of cookies. First and foremost, I would recommend leveraging your own first-party data. Now is the time to start considering data collaboration with publishers, turning your data to actionable segments.

Also, ask your agency what they are doing to prepare for the deprecation of cookies and how they could assist you.

Some players also rely on the “walled garden” solution. Overall, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we could all continue to enjoy an open market of solutions and interactions, especially in the future.

Using AI in Programmatic Advertising

It’s challenging to provide an exact answer to how AI will ultimately impact programmatic advertising. In the short term, I believe it can significantly improve dynamic creative optimization, algorithms use analysis or recommendations. In a long run, I believe it could produce a heavy data-driven digital marketing decisions and platform recommended mixes through probabilistic analysis.

Perhaps we’ll also see a solution where AI seamlessly offers a complete creative solution for testing through a DSP. User-friendliness and compatibility with DSPs are crucial here—then it can really make a big impact.

At Tulos, we’ve also starting to use AI with its latest developments. We’re exploring the best ways to offer our clients AI-enabled solutions. From content and website optimization kind of work to a certain creative assignment.

We’re not just using AI in design and content, but also in data analysis. For instance, ChatGPT linked with the Excel account helps build complex formulas and analyze data in split of a second, providing recommendations based on the data. You must do it the right way; be cautious of data biases and ways you are interacting with it.

As a matter of fact, each one of us, could build a personal assistant to your workplace. This could be an intranet chatbot, which will deal with all internal documentations and company policies but in a conversational manner. Who’s better to answer all the occupational healthcare or vacation bonus related questions your HR must deal with, than an AI trained with every manual your company has ever written?

Closing Words

Thank you, Daniil, for sharing your insights on the hottest trends in digital marketing! Lastly, we’d like to ask a couple of more personal questions.

What would you be doing if you weren’t working in digital advertising?

I’ve always noticed that I lean towards the visual side of things. I enjoy simplifying complex processes or information into visually pleasing and easily digestible concepts. My slides are an absolute killer!

Another passion of mine is cooking. Here as well a large amount of complex ingredients is transformed into tasty and visually pleasant dishes. I truly enjoy seeing people’s reactions to both my presentations and the dishes I prepare.

Name one or more colleagues who have significantly influenced your career!

First and Foremost – Christopher Fernandez for giving me an opportunity to get my leg into the industry and to get in the right environment under his guidance.

Korppu Korpinen: mentor I have never asked for but truly needed to learn the craft of programmatic to the smallest detail.

Nico Paajanen: the sole reason “leader” consists of a verb – “to lead”.

Niko Hovilainen: my coach for inner peace in daily turbulences in media world. Last but certainly not the least, my partner in crime and my programmatic advertising twin sister: Emmi Vilkanen.