Sustainability
We’re committed to investing in a sustainable and climate-conscious future, and believe our industry has an important role to play in driving change.
We’re committed to investing in a sustainable and climate-conscious future, and believe our industry has an important role to play in driving change.
The path to a more sustainable future
We’ve taken measures across our business to accelerate our sustainability efforts and make climate-conscious decisions. We know this is a journey, and one that we are committed to.
As we continue on a more sustainable future, we consider our carbon footprint across five main dimensions: data centres, product and technology, industry collaboration, operations, and employee support.
Data centres
Our goal is to use 100% clean and renewable energy across all of our global data centres. We’ve achieved 93% clean and renewable energy use, with eight of our 10 data centres already at 100%.
Our data centres are also primarily located in cooler climates, allowing us to reduce energy usage by cooling facilities with external air for over nine months of the year.
Product and technology
Rewriting our entire exchange architecture in 2021 not only made our teams and code deployment hyper-efficient, we also reduced our power per auction by 40%.1 We’ve significantly invested in more energy-efficient computing to reduce our energy footprint by an additional 20%.2
We’re committed to continually upgrading and modernising our technology infrastructure globally, and anticipate reducing our physical footprint even further over the next five years.
1 As measured by the increase in auctions hosted on the same class of exchange hardware
2 Based on energy used per auction on the exchange
Industry collaboration
Industry collaboration is paramount on the path to net zero. We work with leading industry organisations to be a part of the solution in establishing consistent standards and measurement to ultimately drive change.
Ad Net Zero
As proud members of Ad Net Zero, the advertising industry’s drive to reduce the carbon impact of developing, producing, and running advertising to real net zero, we’re active participants in the Ad Net Zero Steering Group and other working groups.
Scope3
Through our partnership with Scope3, we offer Index Green Inventory Packages, which are carbon-sustainable media packages for buyers to fully offset the impact of their digital advertising campaigns. This is part of our commitment to ongoing research and investment in green innovation that will help our customers decrease emissions and achieve their sustainability goals.
IAB
We’re an active participant in multiple IAB-led sustainability groups globally, including the Sustainability Working Group within the IAB Tech Lab, and IAB UK, IAB Europe, and IAB Australia.
51toCarbonZero
We’ve partnered with 51toCarbonZero to measure and report on our carbon footprint and set an accountable plan for improving sustainability across our organization.
Operations
We’re dedicated to creating responsible workspaces by occupying high-performance green buildings and partnering with responsible and sustainable organisations.
Operations
We’re dedicated to creating responsible workspaces by occupying high-performance green buildings and partnering with responsible and sustainable organisations.
Sustainable offices
Our two largest offices, located in Toronto and New York City, are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified. We also offer a number of sustainable office amenities such as composting, recycling, light sensors, and bike storage.
Eco-friendly swag
We partner with Fairware, a certified B Corporation that prioritises sustainability and ethical operations, to source eco-friendly swag for our new employee kits, internal swag needs, and more.
Electronics recycling
We recycle computers and other electronics through the Electronic Recycling Association (ERA), a nonprofit organisation focused on reducing waste by recycling and donating electronics to nonprofits across North America.
Employee support
Index Net Zero
Index Net Zero is an employee resource group dedicated to building a sustainable business for our employees, customers, and the consumers they reach.
Employee donation matching
Our DonationMatch@Index program matches all eligible contributions made by Indexers to registered nonprofit organisations of their choice.
Volunteer program
We recently introduced Volunteer@Index, a program that offers Indexers a paid day off each year to volunteer for eligible charitable organisations.
“A topic that’s frequently coming up for us in agency briefs today is our approach to sustainable media buying. Clients want to know, in more detail, what processes we have in place that allow them to transact in a way that feels familiar to both them and their customers while not leaving behind such a large carbon footprint. Understanding these options and being able to represent brands ethically is an absolute must for us.”
Liam Garratt
General manager, Bench Media
Sustainability in advertising
There is an increased urgency for the advertising industry to reduce its carbon footprint. Tune in to Index explains as we discuss how to take action and start driving toward a more sustainable future today.
Watch now