双语阅读｜YouTube广告业务面临断崖危机
EVEN advertisers can be seduced by slick marketing. Google and Facebook have built huge businesses by promising that online ads are more effective and easily measured than traditional media, such as television, radio and print. This year the amount spent on internet advertising, globally and in America, is forecast to surpass television advertising for the first time . But a controversy at YouTube, an online-video site owned by Google, shows how digital advertising still has problems to sort out before it lives up to the dazzling sales pitch.
即使是广告商有时候也会被广告宣传所迷惑。谷歌和Facebook两家企业一向承诺线上广告在有效传播和广告监测方面比电视、广播和纸媒等传统的媒体更有优势，也因此成就了庞大的线上广告业务。今年，互联网广告的投资金额在美国以及全球范围内，第一次有望超过电视广告，可是，近期发生在谷歌旗下YouTube网站的广告抵制门事件，说明了线上广告在忽悠广告商买单之前首先要清理干净自身的问题。
A slew of advertisers, including stalwarts such as Coca-Cola, Walmart and General Motors, have announced plans to suspend usage of, or move ad spending away from, YouTube because ads (in some cases their own) were appearing alongside offensive content, including videos by jihadist and neo-Nazi groups. Google’s own brand has suffered: the damage to the firm’s sales could be as much as $1bn in 2017, or around 1% of its gross advertising revenue. Shares of its parent company, Alphabet, have fallen by around 3% owing to the controversy.
上月，在YouTube网站，一些品牌广告或者品牌名称出现在了宣传极端民族主义和恐怖主义等极具争议性的视频当中，导致大量广告商宣布将停止或者撤出在该网站的广告投放，其中不乏可口可乐、沃尔玛及通用汽车这样响彻全球的品牌。谷歌公司自身在此事件中也受到不小的影响，今年的广告损失20亿美金，约占其广告总收入的1%；其母公司Alphabet的股价跌幅约达3%。
It is not the first time that brands have fretted about where their ads appear. In 2013 Nissan drew headlines when it placed an ad alongside a video of a beheading on the website Forbez DVD. There have been other incidents. But never before have so many advertisers raised concerns about what they call brand “safety” all at once and staged such a dramatic boycott.
各大品牌之前也经历过类似的事件，担心自家的广告宣传会出现在不合适的场合。2013年，尼桑汽车因广告出现在了Forbez DVD网站一段处决人命的视频当中而上了头条。这类的例子不在少数，可是从来没有像这次这样，多家品牌因担忧“品牌安全”而齐齐发起抵制。
The timing may not be coincidental. Television networks are gearing up for negotiations with advertisers as part of America’s “upfronts”, in which brands commit around 70% of their TV-ad budgets for the year. It is in their interest to encourage big brands to look critically at digital advertising, which has been trouncing nearly all the other categories. The furore over extreme content escalated after the Times, a London-based newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose empire also contains many television properties, ran a story in mid-March with the headline, “YouTube hate preachers share screens with household names”. Advertisers may also be hoping to negotiate better pricing on their future internet-ad buys by taking a strong stand on this issue, says Mike Henry of OpenSlate, which helps brands place ads on YouTube.
此次事件可能也有人为的因素。近期各大电视网络公司正准备与各品牌磋商广告业务，为五月份的美国广告预售季（Upfronts）提前预热，各大品牌将在此次磋商中敲定全年电视广告预算的70%。此时游说各大品牌审慎对待线上广告对电视平台来说，是有百利而无一害的，毕竟此前线上广告风头过盛，盖过了所有其他渠道的广告投放。在英国《泰晤士报》于三月中旬在头版头条发表了一篇名为“多个国际大品牌在YouTube中为宣传仇恨主义视频‘站台’”的文章，将此番抵制门推向了新高潮，值得玩味的是《泰晤士报》隶属于鲁伯特•默多克的传媒帝国，旗下经营了多家电视台。来自OpenSlate（为品牌进行YouTube广告投放服务的网站）的麦克亨利表示，各广告商之所以在此次事件中反应如此强烈，也可能是出于希望下次与YouTube进行线上广告业务谈判时能够压低价格的目的。
Few can now do without ads that are bought “programmatically”, meaning in an automated fashion using algorithms . The technique allows brands to follow internet-goers wherever they spend time and direct ads specifically at them. “What’s strange is that everyone was so fascinated with targeting ads that they forgot to ask themselves the mundane question of what content they are appearing next to,” says Rich Raddon of Zefr, an ad-tech firm.
现在人人生活中都会接触到“计算广告”，即利用一些算法，自动投放广告。这一技术使得品牌能够追踪网民的动向然后定向投放合适的广告。不过，广告科技公司Zefr的Rich Raddon说道：“奇怪的是，所有的广告商都沉迷于定向投放广告，却忽略了一个最最普通的问题：投放的场合对不对。”
In other ways, too, digital advertising is falling short. In September Facebook admitted that it had inflated the reported time consumers spent watching video advertisements, and since then has acknowledged further measurement snafus. All these issues have invited censure, including from Marc Pritchard, whose role as marketing chief of the consumer-goods giant Procter & Gamble makes him one of the overlords of advertising. “Surely if we can invent technology for driverless cars and virtual reality we can find a way to track and verify media accurately,” he said.
线上广告在其他方面也存在一些缺陷。去年九月，Facebook承认自身报告的消费者线上观看视频广告的时长并不属实，掺了不少水分，随后还承认了深度监测手段问题百出。上述这些事情引来了各种不满的声音，其中就包括Marc Pritchard，作为日用消费品巨头保洁公司的全球首席品牌官，在广告界的地位举足轻重。Marc说道：“既然我们有能力发明无人驾驶技术以及虚拟现实技术，那么我们一定也能够开发出可以更加准确、透明得追踪及监测媒体的技术”。
Although advertisers may be frustrated with YouTube’s poor oversight of where ads appear, there is a limited supply of high-quality online video. YouTube is like a restaurant in a small town: the service may be slow and the quality of food unpredictable, but there are few alternatives, so the clientele sticks around. Today Google and Facebook control around three-fifths of spending on digital ads in America, and their share is only expected to rise.
尽管广告商可能对于YouTube广告投放的监测不力感到十分不满，但是，目前并没有几家提供高质量线上视频的平台供他们选择。YouTube就像开在小镇上的餐馆，尽管服务不到位，菜品也无法保证，可是镇子上就只有这两三家餐馆，那么食客也只能将就了。谷歌和Facebook现在掌握了全美近六成的线上广告资源，未来这一数字只会越来越高。
Google and Facebook might consider making concessions to advertisers. At the moment Google does not allow third parties, such as the firm Integral Ad Science, to filter or block inappropriate content on behalf of advertisers, even though these independent firms have the technological tools to do so. That could change if advertisers continue to exert pressure.
谷歌和Facebook可能需要考虑一下对广告商们作出一些让步了。谷歌目前禁止广告商授权任何第三方对在线视频进行过滤或者拦截，但是，像Integral Ad Science这类的第三方公司的确有这个技术。而如果广告商趁此机会继续施压，或许这两家公司会作出妥协。
Advertisers can monitor ad placement, too. There are tools for this: on YouTube and elsewhere on the internet, firms can select keywords so that they stay away from certain contexts. Banks can avoid videos and articles that mention foreclosure, for example, and carmakers can choose not to bid on ad space near articles about crashes. But only about 15% of advertisers are using this sort of tool, reckons Scott Knoll, the chief executive of Integral Ad Science. In the future more will probably turn to such solutions, and also pay for outside measurement to check if their ads are being seen. Technology has brought headaches for advertisers, but that won’t prevent them investing in more of it.
除此之外，广告商还可以监测广告的投放。目前有一些工具提供此项服务：在YouTube及其他线上平台中，广告商能够筛选关键字从而规避一些与广告相悖的内容。比如，银行可以避开一些含有资产止赎等内容的视频或文章；汽车广告能够尽量离有关车祸的文章远一点。不过，据Integral Ad Science的CEO Scott Knoll表示，目前只有15%的广告商在使用此类工具。但将来可能会有越来越多的广告商选择使用，同时雇佣一些外部的监测手段来监测广告的播放情况。虽然技术给广告商们带来了头疼的“抵制门”，毫无疑问，他们投资技术的脚步不会停。
编译：王朦晰
审校：史林昆
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人