谷歌: 我們的廣告只有被瀏覽才收費

Google yesterday became the first large online ad network to charge clients only if their adverts have been seen, in a radical shake-up of pricing that affects more than 2m sites in its display advertising network.

谷歌(Google)昨日宣佈，廣告只有被瀏覽才收取費用，由此成爲業內首家作出如此承諾的大型網絡公司。谷歌此舉將會給它的廣告定價帶來巨大影響，波及到它廣告展示網絡中的逾200萬家網站。

“If you are an advertiser and a human being didn’t see your ad, then frankly nothing else matters,” said Neal Mohan, Google’s vice-president of display advertising products.

谷歌展示廣告業務副總裁尼爾•莫漢(Neal Mohan)表示：“如果用戶沒看到廣告商發佈的廣告，坦白說，廣告就失去了意義。如果沒人看你的廣告，廣告商爲什麼要付錢？”

“If you are a marketer, why pay if a human being did not see the ad?”

“廣告沒被看到的問題”，一直以來都在困擾着總值達1170億美元的全球在線廣告業。

The problem of adverts that do not get seen has plagued the $117bn global online advertising industry.

據估計，廣告商購買的多達一半的數字廣告根本沒人瀏覽，還有一大部分廣告只有當網絡用戶向下滾動到網頁底部時纔會被看到。數字廣告儘管發展迅猛，但仍然只佔廣告總開支的五分之一左右。莫漢表示，幫助廣告商衡量廣告宣傳的有效性，才能保證廣告商增加投入。

It is estimated that as many as half of the digital ads that marketers buy are not seen at all, with a large portion only being viewed if a website user scrolls all the way down to the bottom of a web page. Despite explosive growth rates, digital advertising still accounts for about only a fifth of the overall spending on marketing, and Mr Mohan said helping marketers measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns would secure more spending.

電視廣告也面臨這一問題。廣告商可以追蹤其投放的廣告是否在電視上播放，卻很難確定人們是否在看廣告，還是趁廣告時段跑到廚房弄吃的。

This problem is also shared by television adverts. On TV, marketers can track whether an ad is shown but it is difficult to find out whether or not someone actually saw a commercial or ran to the kitchen for a snack.

爲了開發新產品，谷歌使用了一種新型行業標準，即如果一則廣告的50%以上出現在電腦屏幕上，並至少持續一秒，才能被視爲這則廣告是“可視”的。谷歌自主開發了相關技術，不僅能測定廣告是否呈現，而且還能找出廣告的哪一部分出現在電腦屏幕上。

To develop its new product, Google used an emerging industry benchmark that only considers an ad “viewable” if more than 50 per cent of it is visible on the screen for one second or longer. Google developed its own technologies to detect not only whether an ad is visible but also what portion of it can be seen on the screen.

谷歌沒有對哪些在線廣告屬於“不可視”範疇發表置評，但它強調，消除“不可視”廣告會導致廣告產品供應受限，因而廣告費用有可能上漲。

Google would not comment on what portion of ads on its networks are not “viewable” but noted that prices are likely to rise as the supply of ad inventory is constricted by the ruling out of “non-viewable” ads.

廣告商同時還面臨數字廣告方面的其他問題，如大量出現的在線廣告欺詐行爲，這是指詐騙者侵入其他用戶電腦，並僞造對某些網頁的瀏覽或對廣告的點擊。