In a joint study with the GSMA, CTTC quantifies the share of mobile data generated by a popular social media app that is not explicitly requested by users. Results show that advertising and related background activities can account for up to 28% of session traffic, adding several megabytes of data per user session and increasing pressure on network capacity and user data plans.
A new study by CTTC and the GSMA reveals the growing volume of mobile data traffic generated without being explicitly requested—or even noticed—by users. Unveiled today by the GSMA at MWC26 Barcelona, the study was commissioned to the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) and focuses on unsolicited network traffic produced by one of the world’s most widely used social media apps.
The analysis shows that, depending on the app interface, advertising can account for up to 28% of the data traffic generated during a user session, representing approximately 3.7 MB of data usage. Beyond visible ads, background activities related to advertising—such as user profiling and content personalisation—may continue even when users are not actively engaging with ads.
While this unsolicited traffic generates revenue for the social media platform at no direct network cost, it places an additional burden on mobile network capacity and can negatively affect users’ experience and data consumption.