• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, December 29, 2014

Hey, did you know CES is just about a week away? Yeah, that massive conference that used to be all about consumer electronics but has now morphed into, well, everything. Are you going? Well, a company called Ad Hunter will be there making its debut.

Ad Hunter is an iPhone app that claims to "eliminate annoying ads." Except to do so, as I understand it, you click and hold the ad and it becomes some sort of crowdsourced social game. Yeah, I don't get it either. And if you click and hold an ad, isn't that going to count as a click for the advertiser? Whose side are these guys on anyway?

Here's how they explain it: "Ad Hunter gamers, acting as ad bounty hunters, will build an ad hunting agency, recruit their friends as agents and earn golden coins for each ad that is hunted (disabled). By simply tapping and holding any banner or overlay in apps or websites, users will be able to hunt the ad, send the ad to jail and win coins which can be redeemed as bounty rewards."

And on how they're going to make advertisers and app makers not hate them: "App publishers whose apps will have fewer (or no ads) will be compensated in the future via revenue sharing based on user behavior. Monetization models will include low fee monthly subscriptions where users can have ad-free access to a group of their favorite apps, and fees will be distributed among participating app publishers."

Something just doesn't add up.