Skip to main content

Snap blames revenue hit on iOS ad tracking changes

Snap blames revenue hit on iOS ad tracking changes

/

Apple’s alternative ad tools ‘did not scale as we had expected’

Share this story

The Snapchat white ghost logo on a bright yellow background.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Snap has some things to be happy about this quarter. It crossed $1 billion in revenue for the first time, added 13 million daily users, and doubled submissions to Spotlight, its relatively new TikTok rival. But it has also ran into a serious and ballooning problem: Apple’s ad tracking changes, which have already led to millions in lost ad dollars.

The company missed its revenue target by $3 million in the third quarter, largely because of Apple’s changes, Snap announced this afternoon. That’s not a huge miss on its own, but Snap expects the impact to continue next quarter and says its revenue growth will slow meaningfully as a result.

“A more significant impact on our business than we had expected”

“We grappled with industry changes to the way advertising is targeted, optimized, and measured on iOS that created a more significant impact on our business than we had expected,” Jeremi Gorman, Snap’s chief business officer, said in prepared remarks.

In April, Apple released an update to iOS that required all users to proactively opt in to ad tracking across apps and websites — which, no surprise, a lot of people didn’t want to do. That’s made it harder for apps and advertisers to tell when their ads are working, from exactly how they’re being seen to whether they’re actually resulting in purchases.

Snap had been hopeful that it wouldn’t be hit by the changes too badly. “I think we prepared it the best that we can,” Gorman said just last quarter. But today’s remarks are filled with references to the changes and their impact. CEO Evan Spiegel said Snap’s ad business was “disrupted” by the changes and that Apple’s alternative ad tools “did not scale as we had expected.”

These earnings may be a preview of the week to come. Twitter and Facebook report earnings next week, and they’re likely to get hit by the changes, too. In Facebook’s case, the impact will likely be much worse given its historical reliance on the kind of tracking that Apple’s prompt cuts off.

Snap, for its part, is trying to move past the iOS changes by developing its own alternative tools for advertisers. But its own tool, called Advanced Conversations, “will take time to be fully adopted,” the company warned.

Across the board, ad-driven companies will have to figure out a solution to what’s proving to be a seismic shift: the old way of measuring ads is no longer effective on one of the biggest platforms in the world. They’ll either have to figure out new ways of making money or new ways of proving that their ads actually work.

Today’s Storystream

Feed refreshed 16 minutes ago Alexa is better with buttons.

A
External Link
Andrew J. Hawkins16 minutes ago
Tesla is buzzing with robot fever.

Elon Musk’s company is getting ready to debut its supposedly not-fake humanoid robot, Optimus, during its “AI Day” event September 30th. What evidence do we have that it won’t just be another a person in a spandex robot costume doing an extremely awkward dance? There have been meetings! And job postings! And Elon tweeted that there may be a working prototype! Look, this will either be a major breakthrough in the field of robotics or a spectacular flop. But considering Musk has already solved the problem of self-driving cars, I’m inclined to— what’s that? [touches earpiece] I’m being told he hasn’t solved the problem of self-driving cars? And that humanoid robots could prove even more difficult? Oh well, then bring on the spandex dancers I guess.


N
Twitter
Nilay Patel31 minutes ago
I cannot stop laughing at Trombone Champ.

You have to watch this video, and PC Gamer’s writeup is also great.

Accuracy and timing determine how well you play, with little words popping up to tell you how you’re doing. Words like Perfecto! Or Nice! If you’re sucking, as I typically do, you’ll get a Meh or sometimes a Nasty, which is maybe the funniest word to use to describe someone playing a trombone poorly.


J
Twitter
Jay Peters46 minutes ago
A lot of people are playing Cyberpunk 2077 right now.

The game has had 1 million players, “both new and returning,” each day this week, according to developer CD Projekt Red. Interest is likely up due to a big new update and the well-received Netflix anime.


Welcome to the new Verge

Revolutionizing the media with blog posts

Nilay PatelSep 13
S
External Link
Sarah Jeong47 minutes ago
Is it just me or are right-wing extremists a little too into Tolkien?

The obvious example is Peter Thiel naming his surveillance company Palantir (after an unspeakably evil scrying artifact that irreversibly corrupts its users?) but once you notice one profile of an alt-right or extremist figure mentioning how much they love Lord of the Rings, you start seeing it everywhere — including the footnotes of specious lawsuits attempting to undermine the 2020 election.

Anyways, you should read this, about an ascendant hard-right politician in Italy, whose politics are intertwined with high fantasy fandom in a way that will be unsettling to nerds of good conscience. And if you want to read more about Italy’s neo-fascist Camp Hobbit youth rallies in the 1970s, Atlas Obscura has you covered.


R
External Link
Russell BrandomAn hour ago
Republicans are not wild about antitrust enforcement.

The US government’s two biggest antitrust regulators — FTC chair Lina Khan and Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter — appeared for a Senate Oversight hearing on Tuesday, and there were two quick takeaways:

1) Republicans still are eager to notch some kind of win against Khan and the Democratic FTC majority

2) They don’t really know how to do it yet.

Expect a lot of fireworks here if Republicans take back the Senate majority in November.


J
External Link
Jacob KastrenakesTwo hours ago
The Elon attrition is real.

“Hundreds of Twitter employees have fled since June,” according to Insider’s sources. That’s just over a month after Twitter agreed to sell the company to Musk — or, about as long as it’d take a highly qualified engineer to find a new job.

The company is down about 700 employees, according to the report, with many citing Musk and the acquisition as the reason why.


J
Youtube
Jon PorterTwo hours ago
The PS VR2 has a new trailer, but no release date.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but it feels weird to release a slick trailer like this for a product without an official release date? Regardless, the ad offers a pretty nice summary of the headset’s key features, which you can also read about in our recent hands-on preview. The PS VR2 is currently scheduled for release in “early 2023.


N
Nilay Patel1:09 PM UTC
Here’s 3.5 hours of me and John Gruber talking about the iPhone 14.

Going on The Talk Show to dive deep on our iPhone reviews has become one of my favorite yearly traditions. A little bit of Apple Watch Ultra conversation in there too — and yes, I asked John what he thought of our redesign fonts.


D
External Link
David Pierce1:00 PM UTC
YouTube’s former business chief will be Warner Music’s next CEO,

according to The Wall Street Journal. It’s a totally fascinating match: YouTube has always seen itself as a music service, even though nobody else really sees it that way, and talks a lot about how much it pays labels and artists. Warner needs to figure out how to get more money out of YouTube — and TikTok, and Fortnite, and the other platforms. Robert Kyncl’s going to be trying to improve the deals Robert Kyncl helped broker!


A
The Verge
Andrew Webster12:22 PM UTC
Andor, the latest Star Wars show, is now streaming.

Yet another Star Wars show is out, with the first three episodes of Andor — a prequel to Rogue One — available today on Disney Plus. My colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore calls it “a sobering reflection on the human costs of Star Wars’ never-ending conflicts.” My favorite part? There’s a sad droid named B2EMO.


J
TikTok
Jess Weatherbed11:48 AM UTC
This nifty AI lighting tool can give any selfie that ‘Golden Hour’ glow.

ClipDrop Relight is a free web app that allows you to apply artificial lighting to images in seconds. The tool is intended to be used with photos, but it’s taken the art community by storm as folks use it to add depth and funky lighting to their illustrations. Sure, it may not be able to replicate the real Golden Hour, but it saves you from relying on the sun’s schedule. AI = 1, sun = 0.