廣告攔截軟件真的能終結網絡廣告嗎
The great philosopher Homer Simpson once memorably described alcohol as “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Internet advertising is a bit like that — the funder of and terrible nuisance baked into everything you do online.
“偉大的哲學家霍默·辛普森(Homer Simpson)曾經令人難忘地將酒精描述爲“生活中所有問題的源頭和解決方案”。互聯網廣告和它有一點類似，它資助了你在網上進行的各種活動，但又給你帶來很多惹人厭的麻煩。
Advertising sustains pretty much all the content you enjoy on the web, not least this very newspaper and its handsome, charming technology columnist; as I’ve argued before, many of the world’s most useful technologies may never have come about without online advertising. But at the same time, Ads and the vast, hidden, data-sucking machinery that they depend on to track and profile you are routinely the most terrible thing about the Internet.
你在網絡上享受的所有內容基本都是因爲有廣告收入才得以存在，包括這份你正在閱讀的報紙和它又帥又有魅力的科技專欄作者；正如我曾經說過的，如果沒有網絡廣告，世界上很多最有用的技術可能根本不會出現。但與此同時，廣告及其賴以追蹤你的信息和分析你的需求的巨大隱蔽的數據收集系統，卻往往是互聯網裏最可怕的東西。
Now, more and more web users are escaping the daily bombardment of online advertising by installing an ad blocker. This simple, free software lets you roam the web without encountering any ads that shunt themselves between you and the content you want to read or watch. With an ad blocker, your web browser will generally run faster, you’ll waste less bandwidth downloading ads, and you’ll suffer fewer annoyances when navigating the Internet. You’ll wonder why everyone else in the world doesn’t turn to the dark side.
現在，有越來越多的網絡用戶通過安裝廣告攔截軟件來躲避網絡廣告每天的狂轟濫炸。這類簡單的免費軟件可以讓你在上網時不會碰到廣告突然冒出來擋在你想閱讀或觀看的內容前面。裝了攔截軟件，網頁瀏覽器總體上會運行得更快，浪費在加載廣告上的帶寬會更少，上網時也更少碰到讓人惱火的情況。你會奇怪，其他人爲什麼不也加入到這個沒有廣告的世界來。
Well, everyone may be catching on. Ad blocking has been around for years, but adoption is now rising steeply, at a pace that some in the ad industry say could prove catastrophic for the economic structure underlying the web. That has spurred a debate about the ethic of ad blocking. Some publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content, we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads.
實際上，的確可能所有人都學會了用這種東西。廣告攔截技術已經出現好幾年，但現在它的使用人數正迅速竄升，其速度之快甚至讓一些廣告界人士認爲覺得會對支撐網絡的經濟結構帶來災難性影響。這種情況引發了有關廣告攔截正確與否的辯論。一些出版商和廣告商表示，廣告攔截違反了約束互聯網的潛在約定——爲了獲取免費內容，我們都需要忍受不斷出現的廣告干擾。
But in the long run, there could be a hidden benefit to blocking ads for advertisers and publishers: Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst excesses. If blocking becomes widespread, the ad industry will be pushed to produce ads that are simpler, less invasive, and are far more transparent about the way they’re handling our data — or risk getting blocked forever if they fail.
但從長遠看，廣告攔截對廣告商和出版商可能存在一個潛在利好：最終它也許可以免去廣告業最大的浪費。如果廣告攔截普及開來，將迫使廣告商推出更簡潔、侵擾性更弱的廣告，他們處理有關我們的信息的方式也會比過去透明得多，否則就要面對被永遠屏蔽的危險。
“It’s clear to us that the ads ecosystem is broken,” said Ben Williams, a spokesman for Eyeo, the German company that makes Adblock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software. “What we need is a sea change in the industry to get to a place where we have a good amount of better ads out there, ads that users accept.”
“顯然，廣告業的生態系統已經遭到了破壞，”Eyeo公司發言人本·威廉姆斯(Ben Williams)說道。這家德國公司開發了最流行的廣告攔截軟件Adblock Plus。“廣告業需要有一場真正的變革，使他們能創造一大批用戶能接受的更出色的廣告。”
The industry may not have much time to wait. In a report last week, Adobe and PageFair, an Irish start-up that tracks ad-blocking, estimated that blockers will cost publishers nearly $22 billion in revenue this year. Nearly 200 million people worldwide regularly block ads, the report said, and the number is growing fast, increasing 41 percent globally in the last year.
留給這個行業的時間可能不多了。在上週發佈的一份報告中，Adobe和追蹤廣告攔截情況的愛爾蘭創業公司PageFair估計，廣告攔截軟件今年大概會讓出版商損失將近220億美元的收入。該報告還指出，全世界已有2億人經常攔截廣告，而且這一數字在快速增多，去年就提升了41%。
Today ad-blocking is mostly restricted to desktop web browsers. But iOS 9, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, will include support for ad blockers when it becomes available in the fall. Several ad-blocking firms are already creating apps for the new OS; when it’s out, you’ll simply download an ad blocker and no longer have to see ads on the iPhone’s version of Safari and possibly in other apps that open web links.
目前，廣告屏蔽軟件大多隻能安裝在電腦上。但蘋果預計於秋季發佈的最新移動操作系統iOS 9將能支持廣告屏蔽功能。有幾家公司已經在研發適用於這一新版系統的應用。等它發佈以後，你只需下載一個廣告攔截軟件，就可以在iPhone的Safari瀏覽器上屏蔽廣告了，也許還適用於能打開網絡鏈接的其他應用。
“What’s likely to happen is that of the 200 million people who use ad blocking now, let’s say half of them have iPhones — they’re all going to install one of these things,” said Sean Blanchfield, the chief executive of PageFair. “Then they’ll start telling all their friends about this amazing app that saves your battery, saves your data and speeds up the web, and it’s likely to go viral. A lot of people are going to get accustomed to having an ad-free mobile experience.”
“很可能發生的情況是，現在使用廣告攔截軟件的2億人中，就當其中有一半用iPhone好了，他們全都會在手機上安裝一個這種軟件，”PageFair的首席執行官西恩·布蘭奇菲爾德(Sean Blanchfield)說道。“然後，他們會開始跟朋友談起這個神奇的應用，能給你的手機省電，節省你的數據量，還會提高網速。它很可能會大面積流行起來。很多人將習慣於沒有廣告的移動上網體驗。”
It’s important to note that PageFair has skin in this game, and some have accused the company of self-interested alarmism.
需要提醒的是，PageFair有利益關係牽扯其中。有人指責這家公司爲達到自身利益而危言聳聽。
PageFair also sells technology that allows web publishers to determine if users are running blocking software — and then serves them ads anyway, going around the blockers. PageFair’s software, which Mr. Blanchfield said is currently being tested with a number of large websites, circumvents ad blocking by using “low-level networking” technology that he declined to detail in order to stay ahead of ad companies.
PageFair同時銷售的一種技術可以讓出版商監測用戶是否在使用廣告攔截軟件，然後繞過攔截仍向這些人發送廣告。布蘭奇菲爾德表示，目前有很多大型網站正在試用PageFair的軟件，可以通過“低層次聯網”技術幫助客戶繞過攔截。爲了能讓自己在廣告公司中保持領先，他拒絕透露這項技術的細節。
Showing ads to people who have downloaded ad blockers sounds a little spammy. But in a twist, it may also lead to better ads. Here’s how: PageFair’s canny strategy to mitigate users’ outrage is that it will only show ads that aren’t “intrusive,” Mr. Blanchfield said. That means the ads won’t feature animations, they won’t block content, and they won’t load “trackers” that monitor and report back to some unknown server what you do on a web page.
向安裝廣告攔截軟件的用戶展示廣告，這聽起來也有點像發垃圾郵件。但話說回來，它也可能會帶來更好的廣告體驗。據布蘭奇菲爾德透露，PageFair使用了一種精明的策略，可以減少用戶的憤怒情緒，即只顯示那些沒有“侵擾性”的廣告。也就是說，這些廣告不會有動畫效果，不會遮擋頁面內容，也不會加載會監視頁面活動並向亂七八糟的未知服務器彙報的“追蹤工具”。
By requiring companies to run ads that are simple and transparent, Mr. Blanchfield said PageFair would return sanity to the ad business. “We as an industry have lost the trust of our users, who are right — there are a lot of very bad ads out there,” he said. “We have one shot as an industry to get this right.”
蘭奇菲爾德說，通過要求公司只打出簡單幹淨的廣告，PageFair可以給廣告業帶來健全的生態。“這個行業失去了用戶的信任，而用戶是對的，網絡上的確有很多糟糕透頂的廣告，”他說。“我們有這樣一次機會，可以改變這種狀況。”
PageFair is just one of the firms trying to create an ecosystem that produces better ads. After wrestling with the implications of their software, the founders of AdBlock Plus created an initiative called “Acceptable Ads,” which sets out a standard for ads that the software will let users see despite having ad-blocking turned on. These ads are also low-fi — they can’t be animated or cover up a page’s content. (Eyeo charges some large companies a fee to show these ads; Google, for instance, pays Eyeo to have its search ads show up for Adblock Plus users.)
有許多公司試圖創造一個可以產生更好廣告產品的生態系統，PageFair只是其中之一。爲克服自身產品給行業帶來的不良影響，開發AdBlock Plus軟件的Eyeo公司發起了一項名爲“能接受的廣告”的倡議，設立了一個標準，那些達到標準的廣告，可以被所有用戶看到，即使他們安裝了廣告攔截軟件。同時，這類廣告也是低保真的，不能是動畫，也不能覆蓋整個頁面。（Eyeo會向顯示這類廣告的一些大公司收取費用，比如谷歌就給Eyeo付費以便它的搜索廣告能讓AdBlock Plus用戶看到。）
Then there’s Ghostery, which makes a plug-in that lets users find and block online tracking tools — the code in a page that sends data about your surfing habits to marketers. According to the company, the number of such trackers has exploded in recent years because marketing software used to analyze consumer behavior has become much easier to use. Ghostery reported 22 trackers on a page for Slate, 18 on one for Business Insider, 22 at The Wall Street Journal, and 26 for the New York Times.
還有插件開發商Ghostery。這家公司開發的一種插件能讓用戶找到並攔截在線追蹤工具，也就是可以把有關用戶瀏覽習慣的數據發送給營銷機構的網頁代碼。該公司稱，最近幾年，因爲用來分析消費者行爲的營銷軟件變得好用多了，這種追蹤工具的數量呈爆發式增長。Ghostery報告稱，分別在Slate、“商業內幕”(Business Insider)、《華爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)網站和《紐約時報》網站的一個頁面上發現了22、18、22和26個追蹤工具。
Not only do these trackers represent efforts to profile you, but they also waste time — when you see a web page stuck loading, you can usually blame one of these trackers. Ghostery aims to fix that. For a fee, the company reports to site owners which trackers are slowing down pages — which in turn may improve how ads are served. It will also soon unveil a “Ghostery score” that will show users which sites to trust based on the trackers that sites are loading up.
這些追蹤工具不僅反映出，有人在試圖歸納你的特徵，而且還會浪費時間。當你看到某個網頁一直在加載時，通常都是這種追蹤工具造成的。Ghostery致力於解決這個問題。該公司會告訴網站的經營者，是哪些追蹤工具降低了網頁的加載速度，併爲此收取一定費用。這種做法反過來可能會改善廣告的投放效果。該公司很快還將推出一種“Ghostery評分”，根據網站加載的追蹤工具，來告訴用戶哪些網站值得信賴。
The pattern here is ironic: PageFair, AdBlock Plus and Ghostery, which all depend to some extent on consumers’ interest in blocking ads, are also all pushing innovative efforts to create better ads.
這種模式頗具諷刺意味：PageFair、AdBlock Plus和Ghostery都在一定程度上依賴於消費者對攔截廣告的興趣，同時又都在推動旨在製作出更好的廣告的創新行動。
Even some in the ad industry acknowledge this dynamic. Scott Cunningham, the general manager of the technology lab for the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade group that comes up with online advertising standards, said his group had already begun to respond to users who are downloading the software; most recently, he said, the bureau has been working to create clearer guidelines for the trackers’ coded web pages.
就連廣告業的一些從業者也認識到了這種局面。制定網絡廣告標準的行業團體互聯網廣告局(Internet Advertising Bureau)的技術實驗室總經理斯科特·坎寧安(Scott Cunningham)表示，他所在的組織已經開始向下載相關軟件的用戶作出迴應。他說，互聯網廣告局最近一直在努力，針對嵌入追蹤工具的網頁，制定更清晰的指導方針。
“As we’ve watched the incidence rate of ad blocking, we’ve said, ‘O.K., it’s time for us to put the clamps onto some of the areas we haven’t addressed yet,’” Mr. Cunningham said.
“因爲看到了廣告攔截的發生頻率，我們考慮，‘好吧，是時候對以前沒應對過的領域做一些限制了，”坎寧安說。
That suggests another practical utility of ad blocking — it appears to be an effective form of protest. For better ads tomorrow, block ads today.
這顯示出了廣告攔截的另一個實用價值：它似乎是一種有效的抗議形式。爲了明天能有更好的廣告，就得攔截今天的廣告。
