Apple expands its programmatic blocklist to hundreds of vendors

Apple has scrapped its initial iOS 27 blocklist (The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, ID5, Permutive, Audigent) in favour of an expansive library of hundreds of CDPs, DSPs, data sellers and ID graph operators, held in a private WebKit GitHub repo. WebKit now pulls a remote list, so Apple can block or unblock vendors on the fly, without an iOS update and without telling them.

The crux

Apple is unilaterally deciding which ad tech companies may reach iOS and macOS users, and the list is now category-wide rather than a handful of names, so almost any vendor could be next.

Sell-side read

This is no longer a Trade Desk problem. Publishers who depend on third-party identity and programmatic demand on iOS could see fill and yield degrade overnight with zero warning. First-party data and contextual strategies just became more important, not less.

Watch

Whether Google's ad.doubleclick.net domain is on the probationary list (AdExchanger is checking), and any vendor response during Advertising Week.