The online ad industry has been burned by Apple before, and it’s feeling the heat again.
Its latest software update cut off some of the biggest companies that track people across the web to target them with ads, stopping them from working in Safari altogether. For anyone who remembers what came before it’s a familiar feeling. Apple’s earlier crackdowns on tracking in 2017 and 2021 wiped billions off the industry, and Meta alone said the second one would cost it around $10 billion in a single year.
Given that history, it’s no wonder ad execs have spent the week on edge. The block arrived without warning, hit some of the best known names in the business and runs off a list few people outside Apple get to see. For an industry that has watched Apple reshape its business twice already, that was enough to set off alarm bells before anyone could tally the damage.
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