Browser updates, operating system changes, and evolving privacy rules have made audience targeting a moving target for marketers. Each change costs time, and each one rests on signals that were already thinning. T-Mobile Advertising Solutions makes the case that a steadier foundation has been in people’s pockets all along: carrier data.

T-Mobile Advertising Solutions’s new white paper, Carrier Data, Activated, explains how everyday mobile behavior becomes audience intelligence. The data includes app ownership, app engagement, and network-based location signals drawn from more than 140 million T-Mobile customers across iOS and Android. Because the data is based on observed behavior rather than probabilistic modeling, it does not depend on cookies or mobile ad IDs. The signals are managed with privacy controls and aggregated into audience insights that can inform campaigns across addressable and non-addressable media.

The white paper breaks the approach into three layers:

• Data: Observed signals such as app engagement, location, and self-declared demographics.
• Intelligence: Turning those signals into audience personas and indicators of intent.
• Strategy: Activating those audiences across channels and measuring real-world outcomes.

Together, those layers help marketers answer a more useful question: What is an audience likely to do next?

T-Mobile Advertising Solutions works with Blis and Vistar Media to put these audience signals into action across programmatic and digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns.

In one Blis campaign, app ownership data informed 26 million impressions. The campaign exceeded its goal by 56%, generating 61% more conversions and a 29% lower CPA than benchmarks.

For programmatic DOOH, Vistar Media uses carrier data to understand where audiences concentrate across a market and when they’re most likely to pass a given screen. Campaigns planned using these signals have delivered 40% stronger awareness lift and 42% stronger consideration lift.

The data can also reveal useful connections between behaviors. DoorDash app users, for example, are 45% more likely to be heavy streamers and 57% more likely to also use Gopuff. A streaming brand could use that overlap to inform audience planning, while a grocery or convenience brand could use it to reach consumers who also engage with competitors. Those insights don’t depend on cookies or mobile ad IDs.

Identity signals will keep changing, and marketers will keep adjusting to them. Carrier data offers another foundation built on observed mobile behavior rather than signals tied to cookies or mobile ad IDs. The white paper shows how T-Mobile Advertising Solutions, Blis, and Vistar Media are putting that signal to work across audience planning, activation, and measurement.

Download Carrier Data, Activated for the full framework, use cases, and campaign results.