Snap Says iOS Privacy Changes Hit Its Ad Business Harder Than Expected

In an earnings call Thursday, Snap said that it failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter. Snap reported $1.07 billion in Q3 revenue, missing Wall Street’s hopes that the company would bring in $1.1 billion.

Snapchat attributed the revenue miss to Apple’s big iOS privacy change, which put new restrictions in place for apps seeking to track user behavior beyond their own borders. On the call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel noted that the company was caught off guard by how disruptive the impact on advertiser tools proved to be. Without the wide view that many advertisers were accustomed to, they had to adapt to new, more restrained ways of measuring user behavior.