Twitter profit falls but company dodges impact of iOS 14 privacy changes

“Although retooling our revenue products in light of Apple’s privacy-related iOS changes took additional time, energy, and resources in 2020 and 2021, we believe that our product improvements have helped reduce the impact on Twitter”

What you need to know

Twitter posted its earnings on Thursday.
The company’s profit fell due to increased expenses.
However, the company says it was able to avoid some of the impact of Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes.

Twitter posted its earnings on Thursday, revealing a drop in its profits versus expectations, however, the company says that it was able to avoid much of the impact caused by changes made to privacy in iOS 14 that have really impacted Facebook.

In its Q4 2021 earnings, Twitter revealed that it brought in around $1.5 billion in revenue, a huge chunk of which is advertising revenue. Twitter says that it now has around 217 million monetizable daily average users and that it is buying back some $4 billion worth of its shares.

Despite profits not reaching expected levels, Twitter says that iOS 14 privacy changes rolled out by Apple last year have not had the same effect on its business as Meta, which is anticipating a loss of some $10 billion in revenue. From its earnings highlights:

The revenue impact associated with App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in Q4 remained modest, and we have incorporated an ongoing modest impact into our Q1 guidance. The impact of ATT is likely to vary across ad platforms given the unique mix of ad formats, signal, and remediations on each, as well as other factors. Although retooling our revenue products in light of Apple’s privacy-related iOS changes took additional time, energy, and resources in 2020 and 2021, we believe that our product improvements have helped reduce the impact on Twitter. As we look ahead, there is more work to do, but we remain confident that we have a roadmap in place that can allow us to continue improving our product performance and navigate future potential changes while growing our ads business and achieving our goals

It comes as Facebook (now Meta) warned earlier this month that the changes made by Apple to make IDFA tracking across apps and services an opt-in feature would cost the company $10 billion. A report recently revealed that the changes made by Apple have wiped some $278 billion off the market capitalization of Snap, Twitter, Meta, and Pinterest. Apple continues to make privacy a focus of its business and often advertises privacy as one of its best iPhone features on devices like the iPhone 13. The company is reportedly reading a new iPhone SE for an event rumored to be held in March.