A Scoping Review of Methods to Measure the Energy and Carbon Footprint of Web Tracking and Advertising

2026-08-19

AI Summary

本文综述了测量网络追踪和广告的能源与碳足迹的方法，通过分析15篇文献，总结出五种方法，为更全面的环境核算提供基础。

Abstract

The environmental impact of web tracking and advertising is increasingly receiving attention as the ICT sector's carbon footprint keeps rising. Yet the scholarship addressing this question remains scattered across disciplines and inconsistent in its terminology. This paper presents a scoping review of the literature on methods for measuring the energy and carbon footprint of web tracking and advertising. From an initial pool of 46 articles identified through a structured title-based search on Google Scholar, we arrived at a final corpus of 15 papers, from which we identified five distinct methodological approaches: ad blocking, controlled environment, replaying ads, traffic flow analysis, and literature-derived estimation. This review provides a structured overview of the current methodological landscape and a foundation for more comprehensive environmental accounting of the ad tech ecosystem.

Problem

• web tracking
• advertising
• energy footprint
• carbon footprint
• methodological approaches

Innovation

• ad blocking
• controlled environment
• replaying ads
• traffic flow analysis
• literature-derived estimation