News & analysis
Apple's Safari Block Hits Ad Tracking, Publishers Brace
Apple's latest software update blocked major ad-tracking companies from working in Safari, and the ad industry is still tallying the early revenue losses.
By Roomer Editorial · · 4 min read
What did Apple's update actually do
Apple's newest software update cut off some of the biggest ad-tracking companies from functioning in Safari at all. It arrived without warning and runs off a list of blocked companies that few people outside Apple ever see.
This isn't Apple's first move against tracking. Earlier crackdowns in 2017 and 2021 wiped billions off the ad industry. Meta said the 2021 change alone would cost it around $10 billion in a single year.
How big is the revenue hit so far
Early numbers are small, but measurable. Aditude, a publisher ad-sales platform, found that Safari traffic on iPhones and iPads makes up 11.7% of ad impressions and 11.4% of revenue across its client base.
For readers who'd already updated, eCPMs — the per-thousand-impression rate publishers actually collect — dropped 10.5%. Only about 8% of users have upgraded so far, which puts the current overall revenue hit at roughly 1%, according to Aditude.
Consultant Scott Messer said publishers he advises through Messer Media haven't noticed much impact yet, but expects that to change as adoption of the update grows.
Why some publishers aren't worried yet
Two senior commercial execs at news publishers told Digiday they haven't seen an impact and aren't concerned. One CRO said this is largely because their business runs mostly on subscriptions, not programmatic advertising tied to Safari tracking.
That tracks with a broader reality: Safari has been hard to track for years, so many publishers had already written off much of that revenue. The ones still anxious are the ones with vendors on Apple's block list, or with heavy reliance on direct-sold inventory they don't yet have.
What ad tech executives are saying
One publisher executive, speaking anonymously, called the move a "blatant" attempt by Apple to push advertisers toward its own ad network. They said it will hurt publishers with low levels of direct-sold inventory more than publishers with established direct-sold ad businesses.
Consultant Davide Rosamilia was blunter, saying the shift toward restricting anything that generates an identifier — especially where Apple is involved — isn't going to ease up, and if anything will get worse from here.
Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, said his company was largely unaffected since it isn't in the identity business. But he criticized Apple's approach as holding the web to a different standard than apps, where tracking requires user consent. Separately, Apple cut off The Trade Desk's ad server with no warning, then quietly reversed the block in a test version of iOS after Trade Desk's engineers filed a bug report. Anyone on the current version of iOS remains blocked, and the fix isn't expected to arrive until the end of the month at the earliest.
Roomer Editorial's take
This is a Safari ad-tech story, not a creator story — but it tells you something about who still depends on rented infrastructure. Publishers whose income comes from programmatic ads just watched a company they have no relationship with and no visibility into cut their revenue overnight, with no warning and no appeal.
That tracks with a broader reality: Safari has been hard to track for years, so many publishers had already written off much of that revenue.
Travel creators monetizing through affiliate links and bookable pages aren't exposed to this particular blast radius. Roomer's model runs on direct bookings through rails like Vio, Stay22, GetYourGuide, Viator and Klook, not third-party ad tracking that can vanish in a software update. A creator posting Lisbon hotel videos earns commission when someone books through their own site — that transaction doesn't depend on an identifier Apple can blacklist.
This isn't really about ad tech. It's about what happens when your revenue sits on infrastructure you don't control and can't see inside. Apple has reshaped that business three times now, and each time publishers found out only after the change landed.
Roomer Editorial's view: the practical move for a travel creator is to treat your own site as the asset, not your distribution on any single platform. Post the videos wherever your audience already watches them, but route the booking back to a page you own. If a platform changes its rules tomorrow, a site with bookable pages and direct video upload still works the next day. The exception is scale — if you're just starting out with a small following, build the audience first on whatever platform gets you discovered, then move the transaction onto your own site once there's enough traffic to make it worth the switch.
If you're a travel creator building a site, the move is to own the layer that matters: your content, your audience, and the booking transaction itself. Roomer gives creators 100% of commissions on their own site — a structure that doesn't disappear because a platform changed a policy you never saw coming.
Source: Digiday — Ad industry tallies early losses from Apple's Safari tracking block
