Twitter says Apple’s privacy changes had little effect on ads

Twitter Inc. reported third-quarter sales and user growth that was in line with analysts’ estimates, a sign that the company’s advertising business is weathering Apple Inc.’s new limits on consumer data collection. Twitter said Apple’s privacy tracking changes, which require users to opt in to data sharing, will have an ongoing “modest” impact on sales. Rivals Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc. earlier reported that Apple’s software changes dented their business because they made it harder to measure an ad’s effectiveness. “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,” the San Francisco-based company wrote Tuesday in a letter to shareholders. Twitter said “ad engagements,” or the number of user interactions with paid messages, increased 6% from a year earlier. Twitter, unlike Facebook, makes most of its money from brand advertising, which requires less personal targeting and is measured more broadly. Subscribe to Ad Age now for award-winning news and insight. Twitter said it had 211 million daily users in the third quarter, 5 million more than the previous period and a 13% increase from a year earlier. The social media service attributed the growth to “ongoing product improvements and global conversations around current events.” The results show that Twitter, which expanded last year thanks to a contentious U.S. election and interest in the global pandemic, has been able to maintain steady growth since. While competitors like Snap and Facebook are struggling to adjust to Apple’s changes, some aspects of Twitter’s advertising business that may have seemed like a weakness earlier this year — such as its reliance on brand advertising — may suddenly be an asset. Revenue during the current quarter will be $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion, the company said. Analysts, on average, estimated $1.58 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Twitter expects its user base to grow “at or above” the third-quarter rate during the holiday period, according to the shareholder letter. The company gave a forecast for operating income of $130 million to $180 million in the fourth quarter. Shares closed at $61.43 in New York and have gained 13% this year. The company reported a net loss of $536.8 million, or 67 cents a share, compared with net income of $28.7 million, or 4 cents a share, in the quarter a year earlier. The loss included a one-time litigation-related charge of $766 million resulting from the settlement of lawsuits, including a shareholder class action suit that had accused Twitter of painting an overly optimistic picture of its future in 2014. Twitter also said it wouldn’t recoup an estimated $200 million to $250 million revenue loss in 2022 from the sale of MoPub, the company’s advertising platform, while it shifts employees to new tasks. Twitter earlier this month said it would sell MoPub to AppLovin Corp. for $1.05 billion in cash. The company said Tuesday that it expects the deal to close in the first quarter. Subscribe to Ad Age now for award-winning news and insight. —Bloomberg News

Twitter says Apple’s privacy changes had little effect on ads

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