Apple blocked The Trade Desk's ads, then asked it to test a build that may unblock them
On a public bug tracker, Apple asked The Trade Desk to test a new iOS 27.2 beta, and TTD's engineer saw changes within fifteen minutes. The bug sits unassigned while consensus prices a 12% revenue decline for the company whose ad delivery domain Safari blocks.
Vincent Jiang · 2 min read
Fifteen minutes on a public bug tracker
On October 5, Apple's+0.61% — Apple, up 0.61 percent today John Wilander posted to WebKit bug 324771: "A new iOS 27.2 beta went out today. Please test with it." 1 Fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds later, Ian Meyers, senior director of engineering at The Trade Desk+1.94% — The Trade Desk, up 1.94 percent today, replied that he could see changes in build 24B5099f and would test and report back 1. The bug still reads NEW, priority P1, assignee Nobody 1. After two weeks of holding replies, Apple had put a build in the blocked vendor's hands.
Eleven lines, merged in February
The mechanism is eleven added lines, no deletions, merged into WebKit on February 13: listed domains become blockable before Safari's ordinary tracker lookup ever runs 2. When iOS 27 shipped on September 14, The Trade Desk could no longer serve ads to Safari users who updated 3. adsrvr.org is the company's core ad request and delivery domain, sitting in a list of nine whose other entries power the post-cookie identity trade 1 4. Reported growth had already slowed five quarters running, from 25.4% to 3.0% 6, and consensus now calls third-quarter revenue of $650.67 million, down 12% year on year, with EPS down 42% 5.
Slower every quarter since early 2025, and consensus now calls a decline
- TTD revenue, YoY change
- Estimate
Data
| TTD revenue, YoY change | |
|---|---|
| Q1 '25 | 25.4% |
| Q2 '25 | 18.7% |
| Q3 '25 | 17.7% |
| Q4 '25 | 14.3% |
| Q1 '26 | 11.8% |
| Q2 '26 | 3% |
| Q3 '26E (estimate) | -12% |
The landlord sells advertising too
Apple holds both ends of this trade. It runs an unpublished list, applied without notice and without appeal 4, and it houses a growing advertising business inside Services, which set a June-quarter record of $30.7 billion in a $109.4 billion quarter, up 16% 7 8. State Street's 13.9m shares, 3.3% of the class and about $168 million at the October 7 close, are among the money waiting on the decision 9.
Two paths into iOS 27.2
The fork is binary into the 27.2 release. If the block lifts, an overhang comes off a stock priced for decline: $12.08, up 1.32% on October 7 against a down market, down 14.98% for the month, at 9.75 times forward earnings 5. If it stands, publishers keep rerouting. Paradium has already pushed Permutive's blocked code through IAB Tech Lab's Trusted Server, which moves the auction onto servers Apple cannot see 4.
The tell
Nobody outside Apple knows what the build does. Meyers has not reported back, and whether any change reaches the production release, or touches the other eight domains, is open 1 4. The next readings are the 27.2 release and the third-quarter print, where the decline is already marked 5. The scoreboard is public, and the bug is still unassigned.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
