Decoupling growth from carbon impact: a technological turning point
In 2024, Impact Plus reached a critical stage in its journey to measure the carbon emissions of digital advertising. As our platforms scaled to support global advertisers, our carbon footprint increased — not due to inefficient practices, but because more media activity was being measured, analyzed and optimized.
That year was about understanding, structuring and accepting the realities of carbon measurement at scale. It laid the foundations for a new question in 2025:
Can a digital platform continue to grow without increasing its environmental impact?
In 2025, Impact Plus began to answer that question. We demonstrated that growth in advertising measurement does not have to translate into higher carbon emissions.
As in previous years, it is also essential to look at these results through a systemic lens.
The stability of Impact Plus’ own carbon footprint in 2025 comes alongside a continued increase in the number of advertising campaigns, markets and media strategies measured and optimized through our platform. This growth enables major brands to deploy emission reduction plans across large media budgets, where even small efficiency gains translate into significant absolute reductions.
While our role is not to "offset" emissions, the avoided emissions enabled through large-scale media optimisation largely outweigh the footprint of our own digital infrastructure. Improving the carbon efficiency of our platform therefore strengthens both sides of our responsibility: reducing our operational impact while maximizing the positive impact we enable across the advertising ecosystem.
A stable footprint in a year of major platform growth
In 2025, Impact Plus’ total carbon emissions (Read our 2025 report available here) remained stable compared to the previous year, despite continued growth in platform adoption and usage.
This stability matters. It signals that our company emissions no longer automatically increase in proportion to business activity, and this is a critical milestone for any digital company aiming for sustainable scale.
The decoupling effect: growth driven by usage, not emissions
Platform usage and processed data volumes increased sharply in 2025. In fact, data volumes grew by a factor of 2.4 year-on-year.
Yet our company emissions increased far less than this growth, confirming the early signs of decoupling between digital activity and carbon impact.
This gap is not accidental. It reflects intentional design decisions made under the hood.
Technology as the main decoupling lever
The decoupling observed in 2025 is largely technological.
Over the year, Impact Plus implemented several structural improvements to its platform architecture:
- Database evolution : A change in database architecture significantly improved storage and processing efficiency, reducing redundant computations and unnecessary resource usage.
- Frontend optimisation : Lighter interfaces and streamlined interactions reduced unnecessary data calls, improving performance while lowering computational demand.
- API improvements : More efficient APIs enabled better orchestration of data flows, reducing technical overhead as usage scaled globally.
Together, these changes allowed the platform to support much higher volumes of activity without a proportional increase in computing resources, and therefore emissions.
Designing for scale means deepening carbon efficiency
Impact Plus has always taken a cautious approach to the environmental impact of its digital infrastructure. From the early stages of the platform, eco-design principles and efficiency considerations have guided our technical choices, such as locating our servers in France, using low-carbon electricity.
What changed in 2025 was not the intention, but the level of commitment.
As platform usage reached a new scale, its efficiency became a dedicated focus within our technical roadmap. Architectural decisions, database evolution and performance optimisation were explicitly prioritized, not only to support growth, but also to reduce unnecessary resource consumption.
This shift was also easy to justify internally. In IT, reducing carbon emissions often goes hand in hand with reducing infrastructure costs. Optimizing data storage, limiting redundant computations and streamlining data flows directly translate into lower server usage and lower operational expenses.
In that sense, carbon efficiency is not a constraint but an efficiency lever. The same technical choices that reduce emissions also improve performance, resilience and cost control.
Sustainable scaling does not happen by chance. It happens when environmental impact, technical excellence and economic efficiency converge.
What this means for digital platforms
The experience of Impact Plus shows that decoupling growth from emissions is possible but it does not happen through marginal optimisation.
It requires:
- Early investment in efficient infrastructure
- Cross-team collaboration between product & tech
- A willingness to rethink architecture as usage grows
These lessons apply far beyond our own platform.
Conclusion
2025 represents a turning point. Not the end of the journey, but the first tangible proof that carbon-efficient scaling is achievable.
As digital platforms continue to grow, the challenge is no longer whether we can scale but how well we choose to do it.
Decoupling growth from carbon impact: a technological turning point
In 2024, Impact Plus reached a critical stage in its journey to measure the carbon emissions of digital advertising. As our platforms scaled to support global advertisers, our carbon footprint increased — not due to inefficient practices, but because more media activity was being measured, analyzed and optimized.
That year was about understanding, structuring and accepting the realities of carbon measurement at scale. It laid the foundations for a new question in 2025:
Can a digital platform continue to grow without increasing its environmental impact?
In 2025, Impact Plus began to answer that question. We demonstrated that growth in advertising measurement does not have to translate into higher carbon emissions.
As in previous years, it is also essential to look at these results through a systemic lens.
The stability of Impact Plus’ own carbon footprint in 2025 comes alongside a continued increase in the number of advertising campaigns, markets and media strategies measured and optimized through our platform. This growth enables major brands to deploy emission reduction plans across large media budgets, where even small efficiency gains translate into significant absolute reductions.
While our role is not to "offset" emissions, the avoided emissions enabled through large-scale media optimisation largely outweigh the footprint of our own digital infrastructure. Improving the carbon efficiency of our platform therefore strengthens both sides of our responsibility: reducing our operational impact while maximizing the positive impact we enable across the advertising ecosystem.
A stable footprint in a year of major platform growth
In 2025, Impact Plus’ total carbon emissions (Read our 2025 report available here) remained stable compared to the previous year, despite continued growth in platform adoption and usage.
This stability matters. It signals that our company emissions no longer automatically increase in proportion to business activity, and this is a critical milestone for any digital company aiming for sustainable scale.
The decoupling effect: growth driven by usage, not emissions
Platform usage and processed data volumes increased sharply in 2025. In fact, data volumes grew by a factor of 2.4 year-on-year.
Yet our company emissions increased far less than this growth, confirming the early signs of decoupling between digital activity and carbon impact.
This gap is not accidental. It reflects intentional design decisions made under the hood.
Technology as the main decoupling lever
The decoupling observed in 2025 is largely technological.
Over the year, Impact Plus implemented several structural improvements to its platform architecture:
- Database evolution : A change in database architecture significantly improved storage and processing efficiency, reducing redundant computations and unnecessary resource usage.
- Frontend optimisation : Lighter interfaces and streamlined interactions reduced unnecessary data calls, improving performance while lowering computational demand.
- API improvements : More efficient APIs enabled better orchestration of data flows, reducing technical overhead as usage scaled globally.
Together, these changes allowed the platform to support much higher volumes of activity without a proportional increase in computing resources, and therefore emissions.
Designing for scale means deepening carbon efficiency
Impact Plus has always taken a cautious approach to the environmental impact of its digital infrastructure. From the early stages of the platform, eco-design principles and efficiency considerations have guided our technical choices, such as locating our servers in France, using low-carbon electricity.
What changed in 2025 was not the intention, but the level of commitment.
As platform usage reached a new scale, its efficiency became a dedicated focus within our technical roadmap. Architectural decisions, database evolution and performance optimisation were explicitly prioritized, not only to support growth, but also to reduce unnecessary resource consumption.
This shift was also easy to justify internally. In IT, reducing carbon emissions often goes hand in hand with reducing infrastructure costs. Optimizing data storage, limiting redundant computations and streamlining data flows directly translate into lower server usage and lower operational expenses.
In that sense, carbon efficiency is not a constraint but an efficiency lever. The same technical choices that reduce emissions also improve performance, resilience and cost control.
Sustainable scaling does not happen by chance. It happens when environmental impact, technical excellence and economic efficiency converge.
What this means for digital platforms
The experience of Impact Plus shows that decoupling growth from emissions is possible but it does not happen through marginal optimisation.
It requires:
- Early investment in efficient infrastructure
- Cross-team collaboration between product & tech
- A willingness to rethink architecture as usage grows
These lessons apply far beyond our own platform.
Conclusion
2025 represents a turning point. Not the end of the journey, but the first tangible proof that carbon-efficient scaling is achievable.
As digital platforms continue to grow, the challenge is no longer whether we can scale but how well we choose to do it.