The Most Popular Paid App in the App Store Is Gone

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Game over for No. 1 ad blocker for iPhones as maker of Peace app says companies 'don't deserve the hit'

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 19 September, 2015, 11:53am
UPDATED : Saturday, 19 September, 2015, 12:16pm

Washington Post

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6sPlus during an Apple media event in San Francisco, California in this file photo. Photo: Reuters

For the past two days, Marco Arment has been the envy of the Apple iTunes store. His US$3 Peace app, which allowed users to block ads when surfing the Web on their iPhones, held the title of most downloaded paid app.

But Arment took the programme down Friday, citing concerns that it was hurting companies that rely on ads to stay in business and that they "don’t deserve the hit."

Arment’s app and other ad blockers have skyrocketed in popularity since Apple added support for the technology in its newest mobile operating system, iOS 9, which launched Wednesday.

But the programmes also are at the centre of a debate over the economy and the shape of the Internet. Companies including giants such as Google and Facebook, as well as start-ups and media organisations, offer their services free - if users tacitly agree to view targeted ads based on their online habits.

Arment appeared to acknowledge that the backlash over his programme prompted him to pull it from the iTunes store.

"It’s simply not worth it," he wrote in a blog post.

"I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to turn away an opportunity like this, and I don’t begrudge anyone else who wants to try it. I’m just not built for this business."

Online advertising is part of the fundamental trade-off that powers much of the Web: Almost everything users do online is tracked by advertisers who fund the "free" services consumers have come to expect: email, social networks and access to online news.

Google and Facebook have built online empires based on this idea. And a slew of other companies have sprung up, serving as middlemen between publishers and advertisers who create detailed profiles of users as they travel across the Web, measuring the efficiency of ads and setting up what amount to real-time auctions for digital ad space.

Critics say the resulting system can be irritating, invasive and sometimes unsafe for users.

A sales assistant shows features of iOS 9 on an Apple iPhone 6 at an Apple reseller after last week's upgrade. Photo: Reuters

Ads slow downloading time, especially on mobile devices. And they can take over screens, putting a layer of frustration between users and the content they want to read on the Internet.

Privacy advocates worry that consumers may not understand how intimately they are being tracked. And a wave of "malvertising" attacks have used legitimate advertising exchanges to deliver malware to people visiting even some of the most trusted websites.

Ad blockers can mitigate these problems, but they also turn users into freeloaders - getting goods without "paying" for them with their attention, personal data and, ultimately, ad clicks.

When Arment first launched Peace, he argued that the online advertising system had gone so far that consumers could be justified for opting out.

"The ’implied contract’ theory that we’ve agreed to view ads in exchange for free content is void because we can’t review the terms first - as soon as we follow a link, our browsers load, execute, transfer, and track everything embedded by the publisher," he wrote.

"Our data, battery life, time, and privacy are taken by a blank check with no recourse."

Yet publishers are more than ever at the mercy of the online advertising industry. Traditional outlets have been seeing their revenue from print products plummet. They, along with newer media companies, have been scrambling for a piece of the online advertising pie.

Some news organisations have made appeals directly to consumers.

The Washington Post recently experimented with ways to discourage the use of blockers, redirecting some online readers who installed the programme to a Web page urging them to subscribe. The test ended this week, said Kris Coratti, The Post’s vice president of communications.

Ad blockers have been around for a long time, but their popularity has grown as ads have become more pervasive and as users have learned more about the tracking methods behind them.

About 45 million people in the United States are using ad-blocking software, according to a study published by Adobe and software company PageFair last month, a figure that increased 48 per cent between June 2014 and this past June.

And as consumers shift more of their Internet browsing from desktop to mobile devices, website operators fear that Apple’s support for ad blocking on mobile devices will lead to further declines in revenue.

Apple’s Safari browser accounts for more than half of America's mobile Web traffic, according to the analytics firm StatCounter.

"Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit," Arment wrote in his blog post. Still, he added that he thought ad blockers were necessary programmes .

Indeed, as soon as Peace came off the iTunes store, another ad blocker called Crystal took its place at the top of the charts.

Dean Murphy, the developer, made his intentions clear: "I have no plans to remove Crystal from the store."