Twitter Avoids Revenue Hit From Apple Privacy Changes

Twitter Inc on Tuesday reported its quarterly revenue grew 37% and avoided the brunt of Apple Inc privacy changes on advertising that hobbled its rivals, sending its shares up 3%.

New Delhi: Twitter Inc on Tuesday reported its quarterly revenue grew 37% and avoided the brunt of Apple Inc privacy changes on advertising that hobbled its rivals, sending its shares up 3%. The social networking site has been working to add new features such as audio chat rooms to attract users, and also rolled out improvements to its advertising capabilities to reach its goal of doubling annual revenue by 2023.

Advertising revenue was $1.14 billion during the quarter ended September 30, in line with consensus estimates. The company said it saw a "modest" impact to ad revenue due to privacy changes Apple rolled out, which prevent advertisers from tracking users on their devices without their consent.

Investors had expected Twitter would be relatively shielded from being hurt by the changes, because most of its advertisers do not rely on highly targeted ads. As the San Francisco-based company works to expand its targeted advertising business, it is introducing more features like topics that users can follow on Twitter.

Those features provide data on people's interests that can eventually be used to help deliver relevant ads, said Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, during a conference call with analysts.