Search marketing is often seen as low-impact compared to industries with visible supply chains like transport or manufacturing. But behind every impression, click, and landing-page load, there’s an energy cost. At scale, those costs translate into a measurable carbon footprint.
As more organisations account for their full environmental impact, digital activity is increasingly under scrutiny. Search marketing may be intangible, but it isn’t impact-free.
Where emissions come from
Data centres and ad serving
Search and ad platforms rely on global networks of data centres to process queries, deliver impressions, and track results. Each request consumes electricity for servers, networking and cooling.
User devices
Once an ad is served, devices use power to load and render it. Heavier landing pages, unnecessary scripts, and unoptimised images increase this energy demand.
Ad delivery and measurement
Every impression triggers activity across ad exchanges, demand-side platforms and analytics systems. Multiplied millions of times, this adds significant overhead.
Inefficient targeting
Campaigns with broad targeting, poor keyword lists, or excessive frequency caps drive wasted impressions and wasted carbon.
Upstream and embodied impacts
Beyond operations, there’s the carbon cost of manufacturing servers, networking equipment, and even end-user devices — what researchers call “embodied emissions.”
What research shows
Recent studies on digital infrastructures highlight that ICT (information and communications technology) contributes an estimated 2–4% of global greenhouse gas emissions – on par with aviation (Nature). Within that, advertising and search activity form a growing share.
A 2024 paper in Technological Forecasting & Social Change (ScienceDirect) emphasises three important points:
- Marginal energy use matters: Each additional search query, impression, or click carries incremental energy demand. While small individually, at scale these costs become substantial
- Efficiency alone won’t solve it: Gains in digital efficiency risk being offset by the “rebound effect” – more usage encouraged by lower costs
- Systems view required: The footprint goes beyond electricity. The manufacture, maintenance and disposal of servers, networks and devices all contribute significantly to total emissions
In other words, the carbon footprint of search marketing isn’t just about how campaigns run today, but also about the infrastructures and behaviours they sustain.
Wasted impressions and the ‘Badvertising’ critique
Many digital ads are wasted impressions – served to people who ignore them. Similarly, PR strategies often rely on mass outreach, hoping a handful of journalists will respond. All of this creates unnecessary digital traffic and, in turn, unnecessary emissions.
This is where digital marketing intersects with concerns raised by Badvertising, the campaign that highlights how advertising drives environmental harm. While Badvertising focuses on the promotion of fossil fuels and high-carbon products, the issue goes beyond what is being advertised. The sheer scale of digital marketing itself has an enormous environmental cost.
Take programmatic advertising: automated ad placements across thousands of websites involve multiple data exchanges, real-time bidding, and tracking — each step consuming energy. Studies show that up to 70% of programmatic ad spend is wasted on ads never seen by a real person (ISBA & PwC report). That’s a lot of energy spent for no impact.
Before telling others to act, the digital marketing industry must look at its own footprint. Instead of focusing only on efficiency, businesses need to rethink their approach: the goal shouldn’t be to reach the highest number of people possible, but to reach the right people in the most effective way.
How to reduce the carbon footprint of your search campaigns
Target smarter
Focus on high-intent keywords and audience segments. Use negative keywords and prune low-performing terms to avoid wasted impressions.
Improve ad quality and relevance
Relevant ads reduce bounce rates and wasted clicks. Better Quality Scores also lower the energy required per conversion.
Optimise landing pages
Strip out unnecessary scripts, compress assets, and simplify code. Fast, lightweight pages reduce energy use and improve conversion rates.
Set sensible frequency caps
Limit repeated impressions to the same user. This prevents ad fatigue and avoids unnecessary energy consumption.
Choose greener infrastructure
Where possible, use green hosting, CDNs powered by renewable energy, and partners with sustainability commitments.
The bigger picture
The carbon footprint of search marketing is small per click, but significant at scale. By designing more efficient campaigns, you’re not just lowering costs and improving results – you’re also reducing environmental impact.
But as research and campaigns like Badvertising highlight, efficiency alone isn’t enough. The industry needs to rethink its obsession with scale and start prioritising meaningful, effective connections.
Final thought
Search advertising isn’t carbon-neutral, but it can be made more responsible. By treating sustainability as another performance metric, marketers can align campaigns with broader climate goals – without sacrificing results.
Interested in making your PPC or SEO strategy more sustainable? Talk to the GOAT team.
