A top iPhone ad-blocking application was pulled from the App Store on Friday by its creator, amid a surge in interest in new programs to thwart marketing messages.
Programmer Marco Arment removed the Peace app after it spent more than a day as the most downloaded paid application at Apple Inc’s online shop.
“Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn’t feel good, which I didn’t anticipate,” Arment said in a post at Marco.org. “Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a tonne of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit.”
The US$2.99 app jumped to the top of the charts after the Wednesday release of updated iOS 9 Apple mobile operating software that allows the use of programs that block ads from popping up while visiting Web sites using the Safari Web browser.
While blocking ads promised to make surfing the internet from iPhones or iPads faster and rein in telecom data use, it also sabotages what has long been the main way Web sites make money while providing free content or services.
“Of course, ads pay for properties on the Web,” Enderle Group independent analyst Rob Enderle said. “You are essentially fast-forwarding through the commercials the way people do with TV.”
According to the analyst, skipping ads is not new. Ad blockers have been options on desktop computers for some time, but the number of people who opt to turn them on has been low.
Meanwhile, mobile lifestyles involving smartphones or tablets have increasingly centered on using apps that sidestep Web browsers all together.
Ad-blocking does not apply to apps, which are vetted by Apple before being allowed in the App Store and which come with the ability of Apple to share in revenue generated.
The mainstay of Google Inc’s revenue continues to be online ads, but a good portion of that involves search page marketing posts that are not affected by ad-blocking applications, according to analysts.
“Doing anything like this that prevents Google from getting revenue is likely one of the unique pleasures for Apple,” Enderle said.
Arment expressed concern that Peace treated all ads the same in an approach that was too heavy-handed in a world where such decisions are not black and white.
“I still believe that ad blockers are necessary today, and I still think Ghostery is the best one, but I’ve learned over the last few crazy days that I don’t feel good making one and being the arbiter of what’s blocked,” Arment said. “Ad-blocking is a kind of war — a first-world, low-stakes, both sides are fortunate to have this kind of problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides.”
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