每天一篇经济学人 | Digital advertising 数字广告（2...
For the past decade there have been two universally acknowledged truths about digital advertising. First, the rapidly growing industry was largely impervious to the business cycle. Second, it was dominated by the duopoly of Google (in search ads) and Meta (in social media), which one jealous rival has compared to John Rockefeller’s hold on oil in the late 19th century.
在过去的十年里，在数字广告业有两个公认的真理。首先，快速增长的（数字广告）行业在很大程度上不受商业周期的影响。其次，它被谷歌(搜索广告领域)和Meta(社交媒体领域)的双头垄断所主导，一位嫉妒的竞争对手将其与约翰•洛克菲勒在19世纪末对石油的垄断相提并论。
Both of these verities are now being challenged simultaneously. As X’s economy slows and the West’s slides towards a recession, companies everywhere are squeezing their marketing budgets. Until recently, that would have meant cutting non-digital ads but maintaining, or even raising, online spending. With most ad dollars now going online, that strategy is running out of road. Last quarter Meta reported its first-ever year-on-year decline in revenues. Snap, a smaller rival, is laying off a fifth of its workforce.
这两个真理现在同时受到了挑战。随着[]经济放缓，西方经济逐渐走向衰退，世界各地的公司都在紧缩营销预算。直到最近，这意味着削减非数字广告，但保持甚至增加在线广告的支出。如今，大多数广告支出都投向了线上，这种策略已经走到尽头。上个季度，Meta报告其收入首次同比下降。其规模较小的竞争对手Snap正在裁其五分之一的劳动力。
For Meta and for Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, the cyclical problem may not be the worst of it. They might once have hoped to offset the digital-ad pie’s slower growth by grabbing a larger slice of it. No longer. Although the two are together expected to rake in some $300bn in revenues this year, sales of their four biggest rivals in the West will amount to almost a quarter as much. If that does not sound like a lot, it is nevertheless giving the incumbents reason to worry. Five years ago most of those rivals were scarcely in the ad business at all. What is more, as digital advertising enters a period of transformation, the challengers look well-placed to increase their gains.
对于Meta以及Alphabet（谷歌的母公司）来说，周期性问题可能还不是最糟糕的。他们可能曾经希望通过抢占更大的份额来抵消数字广告这块蛋糕增长缓慢的影响。现在不再行得通了。尽管这两家公司今年的总收入预计将达到3000亿美元左右，但它们在西方的四大竞争对手的销售额将接近这一数字的四分之一。如果这听起来不是很多，但这确实给他们带来了担忧。五年前，这些竞争对手几乎都没有涉足广告业。更重要的是，随着数字广告进入转型时期，挑战者似乎有能力增加他们的收益。
The noisiest newcomer to the digital-ad scene is TikTok. In the five years since its launch the short-video app has sucked ad dollars away from Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s two biggest properties—so much so that the two social networks are reinventing themselves in the image of their []-owned rival. TikTok’s worldwide revenue will exceed $11bn this year and will be double that by 2024, forecasts eMarketer, a firm of analysts.
数字广告领域最喧闹的新来者是TikTok。自其推出5年以来，这款短视频应用从Facebook和Instagram这两个Meta最大的资产中吸走了大量的广告收入，这一收入多到这两个社交网络正在按照TikTok的形象重塑自己。分析公司eMarketer预测，TikTok的全球营收在今年将超过110亿美元，到2024年将翻一番。
The TikTok threat is well known—not least to Meta’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who mentioned the “unique” competitor five times on a recent earnings call. But Meta and Google may have more to worry about closer to home, where a trio of American tech firms are loading ever more ads around their main businesses.
TikTok带来的“威胁”是众所周知的，特别是对Meta的老板马克·扎克伯格，他在最近的一次财报电话会议上五次提到这个“独特的”竞争对手。但是Meta和谷歌可能更需要担心的是在其家门口的(竞争对手)，美国的三家科技公司正在他们的主要业务上载入越来越多的广告。
Chief among them is Amazon, forecast to take nearly 7% of worldwide digital-ad revenue this year, up from less than 1% just six years ago. The company started reporting details of its ad business only in February, when it revealed sales in 2021 of $31bn. As Benedict Evans, a tech analyst, points out, that is roughly as much as the ad sales of the entire global newspaper industry. Amazon executives now talk of advertising as one of the company’s three “engines”, alongside retail and cloud computing.
其中最主要的是亚马逊，预计该公司今年将占据全球数字广告收入的近7%，而六年前这一比例还不到1%。该公司今年2月才开始报告其广告业务的细节，当时公布2021年销售额310亿美元。正如科技分析师本尼迪克特•埃文斯所指出的，这大约相当于全球报业的广告销售额。如今，亚马逊的高管们将广告业视为公司的三大“引擎”之一，与之并驾齐驱的是零售和云计算。
Next in line is Microsoft, expected to quietly take more than 2% of global sales this year—slightly more than TikTok. Its search engine, Bing, has only a small share of the search market, but that market is a gigantic one. Its social network, LinkedIn, is unglamorous but its business-to-business ads let it monetise the time users spend on it at a rate roughly four times that of Facebook, estimates Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer. It generates more revenue than some medium-sized networks including Snap’s Snapchat and Twitter.
紧随其后的是微软，预计该公司今年将悄然占据全球销售额的2%以上，略高于TikTok。谷歌的搜索引擎必应只占搜索市场的一小部分份额，但这个市场是巨大的。据eMarketer的安德鲁•利普斯曼估计，LinkedIn的社交网络虽然枯燥，但其B2B的广告是通过用户花在上面的时间来变现的，用户花在上面的时间大约是Facebook的四倍。它产生的收入超过了包括Snap旗下Snapchat和Twitter在内的一些中型社交网络。
The most surprising new adman is Apple. The iPhone-maker used to rail against intrusive digital advertising. Now it sells many ads of its own. As sales of smartphones plateau, the company is looking for new ways to capture revenue from the 1.8bn devices, from smartphones to smart earphones, it already has in circulation. So far it is only dabbling in ads and does not report sales figures. But Bloomberg reported recently that Apple’s ad business was already generating sales of $4bn a year, making it about as big an ad platform as Twitter. Apple executives believe there is much more to be had.
最令人惊讶的新广告商是苹果公司。这家iphone制造商过去常常抨击侵入性的数字广告。现在它自己也卖很多广告。随着智能手机销售趋于稳定，该公司正在寻找新的方式，从已经在流通的18亿部设备(从智能手机到智能耳机)中获取收入。到目前为止，它只是涉足广告，并没有公布销售数据。但彭博社最近报道称，苹果的广告业务年销售额已达40亿美元，这使其成为一个与Twitter规模相当的广告平台。苹果的高管们相信，还有更多的事情要做。
They may well be right. Changes are coming to the digital-advertising industry which will suit the big-tech challengers. Apple itself is in part responsible for what may be the most consequential development. Its rules on “app-tracking transparency” (att), introduced last year, have made it much harder for advertisers to follow users around the web and serve them ads based on their interests. The eu’s Digital Services Act, unveiled earlier this year, takes steps in the same direction. America is mulling similar legislation of its own.
他们很可能是对的。数字广告行业正在发生变化，这将适合大型科技挑战者。苹果公司本身对这个可能是最重要的发展负有部分责任。其去年推出的“应用追踪透明度”(ATT)规定，使得广告商更难在网络上追踪用户，并根据用户的兴趣向他们提供广告。今年早些时候公布的欧盟《数字服务法案》也朝着相同的方向迈了一步。美国也在考虑自己的类似立法。
The crackdown on tracking has been especially hard on platforms that serve display ads, which target consumers on the basis of their interests, as opposed to things they have actively searched for. Meta, whose social networks specialise in such ads, said in February that att would knock $10bn off its ad business this year. It is trying to develop other ways of divining consumers’ interests. So are smaller platforms reliant on display ads, but their task is more difficult without Meta’s deep pockets. Or at least that is how investors see it: Snap’s market value has plummeted by 85%, or $102bn, in the past 12 months.
对追踪的打击是对那些提供展示广告的平台的严厉打击。展示广告是根据消费者的兴趣，而不是他们主动搜索的内容来定位消费者的。Meta的社交网络专门做这类广告。该公司今年2月表示，ATT将导致其今年的广告业务减少100亿美元。它正试图开发其他方法来“发现”消费者的兴趣。依赖展示广告的小型平台也是如此，但他们没有Meta雄厚的财力，它们的任务将更加艰巨。至少投资者是这么看的：Snap的市值在过去12个月里暴跌了85%，即1020亿美元。
Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, by contrast, are insulated against anti-tracking initiatives. They rely mostly on “first party” data of their own. Amazon’s ads are based on what users search for on its site: type “socks” into its search bar and you will see sponsored promotions for exactly that. Microsoft’s Bing is similarly immune. LinkedIn is probably less so, though Microsoft could theoretically use data from Bing to fine-tune the ads shown to LinkedIn users (at the moment it does not, though it has looked into it). Ads on Apple’s app store follow the same principle as Amazon: search for TikTok, say, and you may see an ad for a rival app like Pinterest. Apple is rumoured to be preparing to introduce ads on its Maps app, to promote local businesses. Through its move into payments it could learn about customers’ shopping habits. None of this would require tracking, since the behaviour all happens on Apple’s platform.
相比之下，亚马逊、苹果和微软则不受反跟踪举措的影响。它们主要依靠自己的“一手”数据。亚马逊的广告是基于用户在其网站上搜索的内容：在搜索栏中输入“袜子”，你就会看到相应的赞助商促销活动。微软的必应同样不受影响。LinkedIn可能就没那么好了，尽管理论上，微软可以利用必应的数据来微调向LinkedIn用户展示的广告(目前它还没有这样做，但它已经在研究这个问题)。苹果应用商店的广告遵循与亚马逊相同的原则：比如，搜索TikTok，你可能会看到Pinterest等竞争对手应用的广告。据传，苹果正准备在其地图应用中引入广告，以宣传当地企业。通过进军支付领域，它可以了解客户的购物习惯。所有这些都不需要跟踪，因为所有行为都发生在苹果的平台上。
The other big change coming to advertising is the migration of television-viewing from broadcast and cable to internet-connected tvs, capable of delivering targeted ads. Amazon has already shown ads alongside sport on its Prime Video streaming service. Apple has done the same on Apple tv+, and may yet launch an ad-supported subscription tier, as rivals such as Netflix and Disney+ soon will. Microsoft has no tv offering, but its acquisition earlier this year of Xandr, an ad-tech company, has given it a foothold in serving ads for other streamers. In July Netflix chose Microsoft to run its forthcoming ad business—to disappointment at Google, which had bid for the contract, and to some surprise at Microsoft itself.
广告业的另一个重大变化是，观看电视的观众从广播和有线电视转移到能够传递定向广告的联网电视上。亚马逊已经在其Prime Video流媒体服务上播放了体育广告。苹果在Apple tv+上也采取了同样的做法，并可能推出广告支持的订阅层，Netflix和Disney+等竞争对手很快也将推出。微软没有提供电视服务，但它在今年早些时候收购了广告技术公司Xandr，这使它在为其他流媒体提供广告服务方面取得稳固地位。今年7月，Netflix选择微软来运营其即将推出的广告业务，这让竞标合同的谷歌感到失望，也让微软自己有些吃惊。
Digital advertising is spreading into other markets where the new challengers are well positioned. Audio is undergoing a similar digitisation to video, as listening switches to streamed music and podcasting. This presents an opportunity for Amazon and Apple, both of which have audio-streaming services and make smart speakers. Both also have voice-activated assistants, Alexa and Siri, who could just as easily bark out promotions as take orders. Amazon sees Alexa as a future saleswoman as well as a servant.
数字广告正蔓延到其他市场，在这些市场中，新的挑战者占据了有利地位。随着收听转向流媒体音乐和播客，音频正在经历与视频类似的数字化。这给亚马逊和苹果带来了机会，这两家公司都有音频流媒体服务，也都生产智能音箱。两家公司都有语音激活的助手Alexa和Siri，它们可以像下单一样轻松地发出促销信息。亚马逊将Alexa视为未来的销售员和仆人。
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video-gaming giant, will make it a powerful force in that fast-growing and increasingly ad-supported industry. Its Xbox console already shows some ads on the user’s on-screen “dashboard” and will reportedly soon offer more help for developers to sell in-game ads. Activision’s units include King, the maker of “Candy Crush”; last year King generated revenue of $2.6bn from ads and in-game purchases by its quarter of a billion players.
与此同时，微软即将获批的视频游戏巨头动视暴雪的收购案，这将使其成为这个快速增长、越来越靠广告支持的行业的一支强大力量。它的Xbox游戏机已经在用户的屏幕“仪表盘”上显示了一些广告，据报道，它很快将为开发者销售游戏内广告提供更多帮助。动视旗下包括《糖果粉碎传奇》的制作商King；去年，King的2.5亿玩家通过广告和游戏内购买中产生了26亿美元的收入。
As digital ads work their way into ever more corners of the economy, “a new order is going to materialise,” believes Mr Lipsman. He thinks that Amazon will overtake Meta in total advertising revenue, possibly within five years. Google is better placed to take advantage of the coming changes, with its healthy search ads and its vast YouTube video and audio services. Still, it will find things more competitive in future. The incumbent digital-ad duo might have hoped that, as ever more advertising went online, their empires would only expand. It looks instead as if new rivals will reach into their business.
利普斯曼先生相信，随着数字广告进入经济的更多角落，“一种新的秩序将会出现”。他认为，可能在五年内，亚马逊的广告总收入将超过Meta。谷歌凭借其茁壮的的搜索广告和庞大的YouTube视频和音频服务，能够更好地利用即将到来的变化。不过，未来它会发现竞争更加激烈。现在的数字广告两强垄断可能希望，随着越来越多的广告进入网络，他们的帝国可以继续扩张。不过，看起来新的竞争对手将涉足他们的业务。
