4 ms·

A lot, given the sheer number of network requests a single ad can spawn

gruez 3y ago
"A lot", compared to what? A single household? Probably. As a percentage of overall global electricity consumption? Probably negligible. 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
- wasmitnetzen 3y ago
  You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. And then the whole ad industry, every email, every meeting, ... I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. Feel free to put up an estimate then. >I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective.
    - ploum 3y ago
      You have to include the fact that the very clear objective of advertising is to make you consume more. Thus producing more pollution than if there were no ads. So, even if advertising was technically neutral (which is clearly not the case), it would still be an ecological cataclysm. One would even argue that the whole climate emergency is created by our advertise/consume culture.
      - reactordev 3y ago
        careful now, you can't make cents without advertising dollars. (pun)
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        That, plus the industry exists to support a negative-sum game. Past some degree of market or channel or target saturation, the only thing your ad spend does is cancels out the ad spend of your competitors. That, and it fuels the growth of an industry that's happy to enjoy the infinite money printer.
        reactordev 3y ago
        And the services needed to consume said money printer. GCP wouldn’t exist. To be fair, a lot of it runs on AWS so AWS’ business would take a serious hit as well.
    - eru 3y ago
      > I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. To give a really simple upper limit: 36.8 billion tonnes per year. Because that's the current total global CO2 emissions per year. And we can be pretty sure that ads are less than that, or at least not more. I agree with your assessment of the grandparent comment.
    - _Algernon_ 3y ago
      >Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective. Pulling an "estimate" out of your ass isn't exactly any more objective than admitting that attempting to estimate it is futile. "I know that I know nothing" and all that.

"A lot", compared to what? A single household? Probably. As a percentage of overall global electricity consumption? Probably negligible. 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

wasmitnetzen 3y ago
You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. And then the whole ad industry, every email, every meeting, ... I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste.
- gruez 3y ago
  >You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. Feel free to put up an estimate then. >I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective.
  - ploum 3y ago
    You have to include the fact that the very clear objective of advertising is to make you consume more. Thus producing more pollution than if there were no ads. So, even if advertising was technically neutral (which is clearly not the case), it would still be an ecological cataclysm. One would even argue that the whole climate emergency is created by our advertise/consume culture.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      careful now, you can't make cents without advertising dollars. (pun)
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      That, plus the industry exists to support a negative-sum game. Past some degree of market or channel or target saturation, the only thing your ad spend does is cancels out the ad spend of your competitors. That, and it fuels the growth of an industry that's happy to enjoy the infinite money printer.
      - reactordev 3y ago
        And the services needed to consume said money printer. GCP wouldn’t exist. To be fair, a lot of it runs on AWS so AWS’ business would take a serious hit as well.
  - eru 3y ago
    > I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. To give a really simple upper limit: 36.8 billion tonnes per year. Because that's the current total global CO2 emissions per year. And we can be pretty sure that ads are less than that, or at least not more. I agree with your assessment of the grandparent comment.
  - _Algernon_ 3y ago
    >Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective. Pulling an "estimate" out of your ass isn't exactly any more objective than admitting that attempting to estimate it is futile. "I know that I know nothing" and all that.