Snapchat announced that it is launching a new initiative meant to improve its environmental footprint, through helping advertisers understand the carbon footprint associated with Snap ads.
  
Yes, your digital ads also have an environmental impact, and now, you can make a more conscious decision about such, with Snap providing more data on its processes.

It will cooperate with the sustainability platform Scope3, under which scope, Scope3 will provide publishers with different impact measurements for advertisements depending on elements like server loads in creating and hosting ads, the percentage of mobile devices that were used to watch ads, the percentage of company-wide emissions, etc.
Scope3 measures the overall carbon impacts of a business, but it could also be used to break down the elements into individual processes, forming the grounds for this new initiative.

Snap stated:

Here Snapchat announced its new partnership with Scope3 in which Snapchat has become the first messaging platform to directly contribute data toward Scope3's emissions model. So through partnering with Scope3, the company has brought in more accuracy for Scope3's model in social and messaging, built by combining both public and third-party sources of data. All this enhances the understanding of the whole effect that channel has on carbon emissions through advertising as a whole.

So, how much of an impact do digital ads make in this regard?

Snap says that advertising on social media and messaging apps "accounts for 3.36M metric tons of carbon emissions every year across 5 major markets (US, UK, DE, FR and AU)."

Though Snap ads are above average:

"For comparison, according to an early measurement, Snapchat is the carbon efficiency leader among its peers, being about 39% more efficient within its category. Compared to programmatic advertising, Snap is about 60 percent more efficient."

The program will make available Snap data, including video and AR ads.

Formats such as Lenses and Skippable Video are much much lower in carbon footprint than all other formats that are available to marketers. Lenses, in particular, are so light and efficient that Scope3 modified its ad formats model in order to adequately measure them.

So more AR is good for the environment, which bodes well for the potential metaverse future. I mean the same likely doesn't apply to VR, based on the equipment and production processes required for VR headsets. But still, it's interesting to note that AR is a relatively low environmental impact format, as it continues to see more use.
So is this useful, and will it be of interest? Well, it is certainly interesting to consider the full picture of additional environmental impacts through various processes in the chain of production and how these impact total emissions.

Will that make any huge difference in decisions made by advertisers? I doubt it, since the result for their business will dictate their strategy.

But it is actually interesting to know, which could lead to more conscious marketing approaches.

Snapchat said that emissions data would be available in Scope3's emissions dashboard for agencies and advertisers.