Report: since Apple debuted Intelligent Tracking Prevention, the cost for advertisers to reach Safari users has dropped 60%+, as such ads are less desirable
In the two years since Apple released Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature that keeps websites from tracking users around the web …
Context & Ripple Effects
When Apple shipped Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017, it insisted the feature would only block re-targeting while leaving first-party cookies intact — after ad trade groups like the IAB had already asked Apple to rethink the rules. Two years on, the measurable result is that ads aimed at Safari users cost over 60% less: without cross-site identifiers, those impressions simply carry less commercial value.
That outcome lands right where skeptics predicted it would. Coverage at the feature's announcement argued the blocker would entrench Google and Facebook in web advertising, since their logged-in, first-party data doesn't depend on the cookies Apple killed — and Apple itself later moved to fill the measurement gap with Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution.
First-order effects
- Advertisers can reach Safari users at a steep discount, while publishers see the monetization of their Safari traffic fall accordingly — same audience, repriced by browser.
- Apple has effectively demonstrated that a single browser vendor can reset ad-market pricing unilaterally, without a regulator involved.
Second-order effects
- Budgets migrate toward properties whose targeting survives ITP — the Google/Facebook entrenchment flagged when the feature shipped — squeezing independent ad-tech middlemen whose value depended on third-party identifiers.
- Apple's own Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution positions it as the arbiter of post-cookie measurement, converting a privacy stance into influence over how ad effectiveness gets counted.
Third-order effects
- If browsers keep setting de facto privacy policy, audience value fragments by browser rather than converging on market-wide CPMs, and standards bodies like the IAB lose pricing power to platform vendors.
- The pattern points toward web advertising consolidating around first-party-data owners, with privacy features functioning as competitive weapons rather than neutral protections.
The trend: Browser-level privacy engineering is quietly repricing web audiences, shifting ad economics from open-market tracking toward platforms that own their users' first-party data.