Twitter says it saw a “modest” impact to ad revenue due to Apple’s privacy changes

Twitter reported on Tuesday that its quarterly revenue rose 37% to  $1.28 billion and avoided the revenue hit from Apple’s privacy changes, sending its shares up 3%. 

“It is still too early for Twitter to assess the long-term impact of Apple’s privacy-related iOS changes, but the Q3 revenue impact was lower than expected, and we have incorporated an ongoing modest impact into our Q4 guidance.” Twitter said.

Twitter forecast Q4 revenue between $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion. 

In the third quarter of 2021, Twitter said its total advertising revenue was $1.14 billion, an increase of 41%, meeting revenue estimates. Investors had expected that Twitter would be relatively safe from Apple’s changes, as most of its advertisers did not trust highly targeted ads.

As Twitter seeks to expand its targeted advertising business, it is launching more features such as topics that users can follow on Twitter. Twitter CFO Ned Segal said in a conference call with analysts that these features provide data about people’s interests that can eventually be used to help serve relevant ads.

“A lot of this is opportunity that’s in front of us,” he said.

Announcing in early October that it is selling mobile ad platform MoPub to AppLovin for $1.05 billion, Twitter has been working on new ad formats like tweet conversation ads and enhanced App Install Ads.

The San Francisco-based social networking company also reported that Average monetizable DAU (daily active users) reached 211 million in Q3, up 13% year over year, accelerating from 11% year over year growth in Q2, driven by ongoing product improvements and global conversation around current events.

Twitter’s social media competitors Facebook and Snap announced this week that Apple’s iOS privacy changes hurt their ad business.