Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment, who developed the most popular paid ad-blocker on Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) U.S. app store, has pulled the product, citing concerns that the tool could hurt independent Web publishers.
In a blog post on Friday, Arment, wrote on the social media site that he was pulling his “Peace” app because he does not feel that it is his role to decide what content is blocked.
“Adblockers 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.
Arment did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.
The controversy around ad-blocking software kicked up this week after Apple made it available on the new version of the iPhone operating system on Wednesday. Arment’s $2.99 ad-blocking app, Peace, was the No. 1 one paid app in the United States over the past two days, according to Arment’s blog.
“Even though I’m ‘winning,’ I’ve enjoyed none of it,” he wrote. “That’s why I’m withdrawing from the market.”
Ad-blocking tools are designed to help Web pages load much faster by stripping out so-called scripts and trackers that are used to serve the ads.
However, many argue that such tools hurt publishers, particularly smaller ones, by forcing them to develop dedicated iPhone apps, rather than relying on mobile-friendly websites. Some have even suggested that using such apps amounts to theft that will all but destroy the Web as we know it.
Some 20 million people used ad blockers last year, up 40 percent from a year earlier, resulting in $22 billion in lost advertising revenue, according to a study by Adobe and PageFair, an anti ad-blocking tech company.
As of Friday afternoon, two other ad-blockers were the No. 1 and 4 most popular apps in the U.S. app store.
(Reporting by Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Richard Chang)
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
