Being smart about data usage
Speeding up the internet with a low carbon footprint in mind.
SeenThis is a part of QNTM, a group bringing digital entrepreneurs and solutions together to strengthen and innovate their products. The Swedish tech company SeenThis develops streaming technology to enable more effective data transfers, often used for digital advertising. Their technology minimizes the amount of unnecessary data downloaded by end users, which leads to shorter load times and an overall enhanced user experience. SeenThis has offices in the Nordics, Singapore, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney and continues to expand to new markets. SeenThis offers its technology mainly to the media and advertising industry, whose internet CO2 footprint stems from the large amount of data transported through the Internet infrastructure to ensure digital ads are delivered to end users.
What are the environmental challenges caused by the growing internet usage?
The information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem is estimated to represent over 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions (on par with the aviation industry), whereof 30% is driven by data transfer such as downloading a file, playing online games, or consuming a digital ad. Internet usage across the globe, by industries and individuals, is only expected to increase, and users expect a high-quality experience. This makes us highly reliant on innovation and low-car- bon energy sources to help us reduce the emissions caused by increased internet use. To alleviate pressure, it is vital to reduce the amount of data transferred without negatively impacting the user experience.
What is the potential and impact of SeenThis’ operations?
At SeenThis, technology is developed with the mindset of being smarter about data usage. A lot of data today is transferred in vain and can be viewed as pure waste. For example, images that are never seen, videos that are never viewed, and unoptimized digital content with a lot of excess data that does not lead to any quality increase detectible by the human eye. The streaming solution by SeenThis only transfers data that is actually viewed, leading to a better user experience. For one of their Swedish clients, the SeenThis solution reduced data use by 64%, with a resulting GHG emissions savings of approx. 19%.
In 2022, Altor released its first Sustainability Report based on data and information from 2021. For the report, a selection of portfolio companies were interviewed about their interesting ESG journeys. In the report you will find more on Altor’s work on Environmental, Social and Governance-related topics and other interesting cases from the portfolio.
Published: Aug 01 2022