美國在線 世界需要移動數據與廣告的聯姻

In a memo to employees after announcing that Verizon Communications would buy his company for $4.4 billion, Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, offered a rhapsodic hymn on a single subject: mobile.

在宣佈威瑞森電信(Verizon Communications)將以44億美元（約合273億元人民幣）收購其公司以後，美國在線(AOL)的首席執行官蒂姆·阿姆斯特朗(Tim Armstrong)在寫給員工的備忘錄中，對一個主題表達了熱情的讚美：移動業務。

The future of nearly all media, and consequently the future of nearly all advertising, he said, is about our phones. “If there is one key to our journey to building the largest digital media platform in the world, it is mobile,” he wrote, by way of explaining why AOL, a company known for its news and entertainment sites and its dial-up subscribers, was merging with a cellphone carrier.

他說，幾乎所有媒體的未來，進而包括幾乎所有廣告的未來，都與我們的電話有關。“如果說我們在通往打造世界最大的數字媒體平臺的道路上有一個關鍵因素，那就是移動業務，”他寫道，這也解釋了爲何以新聞和娛樂網站以及撥號上網業務著稱的AOL，會與一家移動電話運營商合併。

Mr. Armstrong ended his memo, which was otherwise puffed with jargon indecipherable to many outside the world of advertising and media, with a clear message that could double as the catchphrase of his entire industry: “Let’s mobilize.”

阿姆斯特朗的備忘錄裏充斥着行話，對許多廣告和媒體行業以外的人而言難以理解，但他在末尾傳達了一條清晰的訊息，這條訊息也可以作爲他所在的整個行業的口號：“讓我們移動起來。”

His words — and the deal with Verizon he just helped engineer — are just the latest corporate reaction to a staggering shift in the way people across the globe get their news and entertainment. Over the last couple of years, we have collectively decided to use our phones to reach the Internet more than we ever used our computers to do. And like a horde of aggrieved vultures that has just seen its carrion spirited away to some other part of the savanna, the tech and media business is equally panicked and excited about the vast possibilities for making money from the shift.

世界各地的人們獲得新聞和娛樂內容的方式正在發生劇烈轉變，他的話——以及他參與策劃的與威瑞森的交易——只是企業對這種轉變做出應對的最新一例。過去幾年，我們集體決定用手機上網，所用的時間比我們以往任何時候用電腦上網的時間都多。就像一羣忿忿不平的禿鷲，目睹屬於自己的腐肉被轉移到稀樹草原的另一個地方，科技和媒體行業面對從這種轉變中獲利的廣闊可能性，是又驚又喜的。

At the moment, except for Google and Facebook — which together control more than 55 percent of the $42.6 billion worldwide mobile ad market, according to eMarketer — few companies have managed to navigate the transition from desktop computers to phones. The shift has shaken up just about everything for everyone, such as Internet portals like AOL and Yahoo; carriers like Verizon and AT&T; and eCommerce ventures like Amazon. Some industries — music and newspapers among them — were just figuring out the switch from physical media like CDs and print to the web. But the switch from the web to our phones is happening even faster than the transition away from physical media, and in many ways it is more profound.

目前，除了谷歌(Google)和Facebook——據eMarketer的統計，這兩家公司控制着價值426億美元的世界移動廣告市場的55%——只有少數幾家公司能很好地掌控這種從臺式電腦到手機的轉變。這種轉變幾乎改變了所有人的一切，例如AOL和雅虎(Yahoo)等互聯網門戶網站、威瑞森和AT&T等運營商，以及亞馬遜(Amazon)等電商企業。有些行業——其中包括音樂和報紙——還在摸索從光盤和印刷等實體媒介向網絡的轉變。然而，網絡朝手機的轉移發生得更快，而且在許多方面也更加深刻。

As Benedict Evans, an analyst at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is fond of pointing out in a presentation he calls “mobile is eating the world,” the smartphone industry is now shipping nearly three times as many devices as the personal computer industry did at its peak. Smartphones have led to more consumption of media than we had ever thought possible; we spend just about half the time we’re not sleeping glued to some kind of screen.

風險投資公司安德森-霍洛維茨(Andreessen Horowitz)的分析師貝內迪克特·埃文斯(Benedict Evans)在被他稱爲“移動業務正在吞噬世界”(mobile is eating the world)的演講中熱情地指出，智能手機行業目前的設備出貨量幾乎是個人電腦行業巔峯時期出貨量的三倍。由於智能手機，人們對媒體的消費超出了我們以往的想象，我們把非睡眠時間中的大約一半都用在了盯着某種屏幕上。

Phones bring novel technical and user-interface challenges, some of which account for Verizon’s interest in AOL: How do you display an interesting ad on a tiny screen? On an interface fragmented by apps, how do you figure out who users are — and how to serve them with the best ads — as they switch from games to mobile web browsers to social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat?

手機在科技和用戶界面方面帶來了新的挑戰，其中有些解釋了爲何威瑞森會對AOL有興趣：你如何在一個小屏幕上展示一個有趣的廣告？在一個被各種應用搞得支離破碎的界面上，你的用戶正在從遊戲切換到移動網頁瀏覽器，再切換到Facebook、Twitter和Snapchat等社交平臺，這時如何認清你的用戶是什麼樣的人——以及如何爲他們提供最好的廣告？

The rise of smartphones may also bring about something deeper — what could be an existential question for the advertising industry, the business that funds most of modern media.

智能手機的興起或許還會產生更深遠的影響——這對於廣告行業可能是個關乎生死的問題，而該行業是大多數現代媒體的資金來源。

“The question I came to when I started working on ads is, ‘Are ads even relevant now? Do they even make sense on mobile?’” Andrew Bosworth, who heads Facebook’s advertising engineering division, told me in a recent interview.

Facebook廣告工程部門負責人安德魯·博斯沃思(Andrew Bosworth)在近期的採訪中告訴我，“當我開始着手處理廣告時，我所遇到的問題就是‘現在的廣告有用嗎？它們在移動設備上還有意義嗎？’”

After all, phones give us perfect information about everything wherever we are, so why would we ever fall for ads, he wondered? “I step off a train in New York City now, I do not want for an ability to find anything. I have information about everything,” Mr. Bosworth said. “So if all information is indexable and searchable, then what purpose does an ad serve?”

他感到不解的是，畢竟無論我們在哪，手機都會爲我們提供各種信息，爲何我們會相信廣告呢？“我在紐約下了火車，我不想尋找什麼。我擁有一切信息，”博斯沃思說。“因此，如果所有信息都是可索引、可搜索的，那廣告有什麼用呢？”

In that world, Mr. Bosworth said, advertising is valuable only if it provides direct meaning to customers — if, when you pull out your phone in New York City and check Facebook, the phone knows that you’re looking for food and presents you with an ad for a restaurant that cuts through the clutter of all your potential choices, instead giving you a recommendation that is tailored specifically for you.

博斯沃思表示，在那個世界中，廣告只有對用戶具有直接意義時下才是有價值的，當你在紐約拿出手機，查看Facebook的時候，手機知道你在尋找食物，併爲你呈現一則餐廳廣告，使其在各種潛在的選擇中脫穎而出，而不是爲你提供量身定製的建議。

In other words, in a world in which we all carry phones and can get accurate information at any time, ads have less leeway to cajole us into doing something we might otherwise not have done.

換句話說，我們如今都有手機，而且任何時候都能獲得準確的信息，廣告已經不太可能吸引我們做一些我們可能不會去做的事情。

“It’s expensive to get an ad in front of the right person,” Mr. Bosworth said. “If someone spends money to get an ad in front of you that’s not right for you, they’re punished for it.”

“向正確的受衆投送廣告是一件成本高昂的事情，”博斯沃思說。“如果有人花錢向你投送廣告，而你不是這種廣告的受衆，他們會因此受到懲罰。”

Instead, ads now consult vast databases of personal information, and they rely on sophisticated pricing mechanisms, merely to suggest one option out of many thousands that may appeal to us.

廣告現在會訴諸大量個人信息，依靠複雜的定價機制，然後從數千個可能會吸引我們的選擇中選出一個，提供給我們。

People in the ad-tech industry said that in buying AOL, Verizon’s immediate goal may be to marry its data about customers to AOL’s capacity to serve ads to increase this sort of relevancy.

廣告技術領域的人表示，從收購AOL來看，威瑞信目前的目標可能是將其客戶數據與AOL的能力結合起來，提供廣告，增加這種相關性。

“I think AOL was a little on their back foot on mobile,” said Ari Paparo, chief executive of an ad technology company called Beeswax. He added that the most successful companies with mobile ads tended to be those that knew a lot about their customers — that explains why Google and Facebook, which have close to perfect insight into what we do online, are such powerhouses.

“我認爲AOL在移動業務方面有些處於不利境地，”技術公司Beeswax首席執行官阿里·帕帕羅(Ari Paparo)說。他還表示，在移動廣告業務上最爲成功的公司，往往是那些對用戶非常瞭解的公司，這就解釋了爲何谷歌(Google)和Facebook會如此強大，它們對我們的網上活動有着幾近完美的洞察。

With Verizon, AOL may be getting a similar trove of data. Through its cellular network and its various broadband offerings, Verizon can help AOL figure out lots of details about a user who lands in an app whose ads are powered by AOL’s ad services. Is the person male or female? How wealthy is she, and what are her broad interests?

併入威瑞信後，AOL可能會獲得同樣珍貴的數據。威瑞信可以通過蜂窩網絡和各種寬帶服務，在使用AOL廣告服務的應用中瞭解用戶的細節信息。用戶是男是女？她的財務狀況如何，以及她都喜歡什麼？

“When you put these two sides together, it could potentially help them serve you better ads, and serve you ads in different places,” said Eric Franchi, co-founder of Undertone, an ad technology company.

“把這兩個方面結合起來，可能會有助於它們爲你提供更好的廣告，在不同的地方向你提供廣告，”廣告技術公司Undertone聯合創始人埃裏克·弗蘭奇(Eric Franchi)說。

Yet Verizon’s bet on AOL is hardly guaranteed to play out in the way the companies intend. This is both because of the general difficulties associated with any merger and because the industry AOL is going after is in a state of constant flux. Nobody really knows what will work in the larger business of funding media through ads on these new devices we’re carrying around.

然而，威瑞信對AOL所下的賭注，不見得一定能得到如願以償的結果。這是因爲任何收購交易都存在的一些難點，也因爲AOL所從事的領域處於不斷變化的狀態。從更大範圍來看，用我們隨身攜帶的新設備上的廣告來供養媒體的方式能夠奏效，沒人能給出答案。

“If you’re a media company and you see that more than 50 percent of all mobile ads are going to Facebook and Google, you need to really recheck your assumptions about how you’re going to compete,” Mr. Paparo said. “To that extent, I think this is an effort to be competitive — to have some ability to just compete.”

“如果你是一家媒體公司，看到超過50%的移動廣告都投放於Facebook和谷歌，那你真該好好想想自己對如何競爭的認識是不是出了問題，”帕帕羅說。“從這個意義來說，我認爲這是一項增強競爭力的舉措——就是努力擁有一些能夠參與競爭的能力。