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Imagine the impact on energy consumption having to run these ad blockers + running the ad infrastructure. Global warming, is that you?

darepublic 8y ago
So visiting a web page without ublock and the like is akin to idling your car in the morning
- StreamBright 8y ago
  If we could visualize how much energy is wasted on ad that would be really good. I think we need an IoC approach for advertising to get this fixed.
Yizahi 8y ago
It's called war of attrition, I think.
Majestic121 8y ago
I looked for evidence for your claim as in my mind, energy consumption for the ad industry would not be that impressive. I found a paper written in 2010 for the Netherlands [1], claiming that : "Thus, web advertisements increase the total energy consumption of PCs by 3.4%." That's not counting the cost of running the infrastructure, and I suspect ads and tracking probably did not evolve in the right (i.e. less energy hungry) way in the last 9 years. As for the current consumption of power by 'client devices', it is estimated to consume 5% of total world electricity [2] I could not find any number on the energy consumption on the other side, i.e. servers/infras. As a (very) rough estimation, without taking into account the 'server' side of ads, we can estimate the energy cost of ads to represent ~0.17% of total energy produced in a year. In the end, I stand corrected : the amount of energy consumed is far from negligible at that scale. However, while it is definitely not negligible on absolute terms, I think there are lower hanging fruits to focus on to fight global warming, such as reliance on fossil fuels, common use of products made on the other side of the world, meat consumption... [1] : https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energy-cost-of-web-advertising https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energ... [2] : http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-fifth-global-electricity-2025/ http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-con...
- BeniBoy 8y ago
  I found this recent study[1] very interesting as well. Their conclusion: 'In 2016 online advertising consumed 106 TWh of energy and the infrastructure 1059 TWh'. So around 10%. My view is that adblocking is an environmental necessity. And paying business model should always be provided. As a footnote, they estimated that If Netflix switched to a video ad model, 42.02 TWh of added electricity would be consumed! [1]:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195925517303505 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551...
- burger_moon 8y ago
  Is reliance on fossil fuels really a lower hanging fruit than serving ads on websites? I think I get the point you're trying to make but lower hanging fruit isn't really the right phrase.

darepublic 8y ago

So visiting a web page without ublock and the like is akin to idling your car in the morning

StreamBright 8y ago
If we could visualize how much energy is wasted on ad that would be really good. I think we need an IoC approach for advertising to get this fixed.

Yizahi 8y ago

It's called war of attrition, I think.

Majestic121 8y ago

I looked for evidence for your claim as in my mind, energy consumption for the ad industry would not be that impressive. I found a paper written in 2010 for the Netherlands [1], claiming that : "Thus, web advertisements increase the total energy consumption of PCs by 3.4%." That's not counting the cost of running the infrastructure, and I suspect ads and tracking probably did not evolve in the right (i.e. less energy hungry) way in the last 9 years. As for the current consumption of power by 'client devices', it is estimated to consume 5% of total world electricity [2] I could not find any number on the energy consumption on the other side, i.e. servers/infras. As a (very) rough estimation, without taking into account the 'server' side of ads, we can estimate the energy cost of ads to represent ~0.17% of total energy produced in a year. In the end, I stand corrected : the amount of energy consumed is far from negligible at that scale. However, while it is definitely not negligible on absolute terms, I think there are lower hanging fruits to focus on to fight global warming, such as reliance on fossil fuels, common use of products made on the other side of the world, meat consumption... [1] : https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energy-cost-of-web-advertising https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energ... [2] : http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-fifth-global-electricity-2025/ http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-con...

BeniBoy 8y ago
I found this recent study[1] very interesting as well. Their conclusion: 'In 2016 online advertising consumed 106 TWh of energy and the infrastructure 1059 TWh'. So around 10%. My view is that adblocking is an environmental necessity. And paying business model should always be provided. As a footnote, they estimated that If Netflix switched to a video ad model, 42.02 TWh of added electricity would be consumed! [1]:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195925517303505 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551...
burger_moon 8y ago
Is reliance on fossil fuels really a lower hanging fruit than serving ads on websites? I think I get the point you're trying to make but lower hanging fruit isn't really the right phrase.