Apple will soon require all developers to ask users before tracking them across the web, and companies like Facebook have been criticizing these changes as they affect their business models. Now Twitter claims that the privacy changes in iOS 14 will also have “modest impact” on the company’s revenue.
As reported by CNBC, Twitter today announced its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings with $1.29 billion in revenue. However, the company believes revenues will drop in 2021, mostly because of Apple. According to the guide for the first half of 2021, the company is expecting revenues of between $940 million and $1.04 billion.
As privacy changes imposed by Apple are expected to decrease the number of users that are constantly tracked, Twitter’s revenue will be impacted as the social network relies on money coming from advertisements — which use personal data to determine which ads will be displayed for each user.
Looking ahead, Twitter said it expects revenue to grow faster than expenses in 2021, assuming the pandemic continues to improve and taking into account an expected “modest impact” from Apple’s upcoming privacy changes to iOS 14. […] Twitter ad revenue grew 31% year over year to $1.15 billion, according to the report, with total ad engagement growing 35% over the same period.
Besides asking permission to track users the first time they open an app, the new App Tracking Transparency feature will show a list of all apps that have asked to track data in the iOS Settings app. This feature was announced last June as part of iOS 14, but it was delayed to give developers more time to update their apps following the new privacy guidelines.
App Tracking Transparency will finally be made available to all users with iOS 14.5, which is currently available for developers and beta testers.
Author: Filipe Espósito
Source: 9TO5Google
