Commercial brakes 商业广告“急刹车”[E介俗人][经济学人](伪)精读2022.09.24

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Commercial brakes

商业广告“急刹车”

Google and Meta’s $300bn duopoly is under attack 

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.

1.  impervious: incapable of being influenced, persuaded, or affected:不受影响的

2. 过去的十年，有两个事实：1）广告不受经济周期影响；2）这个行业受两大巨头影响：谷歌和Meta（就是Facebook）

Both of these verities are now being challenged simultaneously. As China’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.

3. Verities—verity: something that is true, as a principle, belief, idea, or statement:真理，等同于第一段的truth

4. 这一段承接上一段的truths，刚刚说的那两个“真理”，已经同时被挑战了！为什么呢？首先，第一个真理：广告不受经济周期影响。你看，中西方经济没有以前景气，各大品牌都在挤压广告预算（squeezing their marketing budgets），毕竟没钱了。因此这个真理便被打破了。同理，现在国内综艺节目的广告品牌个数越来越少（我没说广告的时间少），也是如此。但是呢，线上广告（数字广告）的费用，却不减还增。

5. 因此呢，连Meta（Facebook）都首次报告收入下滑，Snapchat裁员。

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 (see chart). What is more, as digital advertising enters a period of transformation, the challengers look well-placed to increase their gains. 

6. Cyclical: 周期性的

7. Grabbing: grab

8. Rake: to gather, draw, or remove with a rake: Rake的名词是耙，这里作动词使用，意思是用耙来扫取。其实和上一个单词grab的意思差不多，都是为了获取而进行的某项动作。

9.  amount to: add up

10. incumbents: the holder of an office 责任者，在任者；这里指的就是极大巨头的老板们了。

11. well-placed: in a good position to do something

12. 对于谷歌和Facebook而言，经济周期性的问题并不是最惨的。它们希望通过获得更大的市场份额来弥补数字广告市场份额的低增速。作者这里来了一句：NO longer! 再也别想了。为什么呢？因为竞争对手跑的比它们快，这导致他们的老板开始坐立不安了。这些进入者开始做的越来越好。

所谓来者不善，下一段会告诉我们，谁是谷歌和脸书从未想过的竞争对手。不过在此之前呢，我们回顾第一段话。第一段话讲了两个“真理”。第一个已经不攻自破。第二个“双雄争霸”的格局，也已经被打破。因此，作者在第二段开头就点出，这些“真理”早就被挑战啦。同时，作者在第三段再详细说明，你看，有这么多竞争者，生意不好做呀。

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 Chinese-owned rival. TikTok’s worldwide revenue will exceed $11bn this year and will be double that by 2024, forecasts eMarketer, a firm of analysts.

13. 对手来了。这里newcomer之一就是Tik Tok，也就是抖音的海外版。没办法，互联网时候，谁有流量，谁就是王。Tik Tok等短视频平台十分使人沉迷，近几年的飞速发展，已经让两大巨头耿耿于怀。现在还抢占了它们原有的广告市场，动了人家的蛋糕，那肯定会有一场恶战。

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.

14. 承接上一段对Tik Tok的分析。这里作者用了threat这个词来表明，包括后面写了脸书的老板在电话会议上5次强调了这位独特的“竞争者”——就是Tik Tok了。

15. 但画风一转，作者说，你们俩啊，别想太遥远的事情了。火都烧到你们家门口了！有3个大厂在不断加广告业务，你们要小心啊！（下面3段就详细介绍了3个大厂及它们的广告业务。）

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. 

16. 首当其中的就是亚马逊。亚马逊的高管说，除了云计算和零售业务之外，广告业务已经是我们的三大“引擎”之一啦。

这里重温一下亚马逊的“飞轮效应”(Flywheel effect)。亚马逊从卖书开始，逐步建立了百货销售渠道。后来逐步开放给第三方商户（Marketplace）去进驻卖货。在此过程中，亚马逊建立起了仓库和物流，向第三方商户（和消费者）收取一定的物流费用，提供物流和快递业务。这块业务叫FBA(Fulfilled by Amazon)。

亚马逊Prime会员收取年费。购买会员后，能够享受包邮服务，以及其他的增值服务。

美国有黑五消费节（类比我国双十一）。每次到大促的时候，亚马逊就发现，服务器不够用，需要扩容。但是为了短短这几天去购买大量的设备，是不划算的。但是又必须满足消费者的需求。于是，为了更好的处理闲置的服务器资源，亚马逊开启了AWS云计算服务，为有需要的商家提供云服务器和计算服务。

所以亚马逊高管口中的“三大引擎”，本指FBA, AWS和Prime会员服务。这三个服务就像飞轮，不断的推动亚马逊这个公司前行。

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.

17. Unglamorous: not attractive or exciting 无魅力的，不刺激的

18. Monetise something: to earn money from something, especially a business or an asset (= something that a business owns) 赚钱，变现

19.    下一个竞争者就是微软了。作者这里对微软的广告业务进行详细分析。比如说，Bing搜索，尽管份额小，但是这个搜索市场足够大；领英在社交领域的广告盈利可以是Facebook的4倍，甚至能多于Snapchat和 推特。

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.

20. Rail against something: To protest, criticize, or complain angrily about someone or something. 骂，抱怨

21. Intrusive: adj. 改变，侵入的; 闯入的; 侵扰的; 烦扰的; 添加的; 插入的;

22. Dabbling in: 涉猎; 涉足

23. 原来最让人想不到的是苹果！作者换了一种语气说，那个iPhone的厂家啊，原来是多么的鄙夷数字广告！现在它自己就往里面加多少广告。苹果想办法从卖出这么多的设备后，从消费者身上“薅”多一次羊毛啊。

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.

24. 作者又说，哎，苹果这样干，也是对的。作者继续解释，数字广告行业会有很多的转变，而苹果要对这些转变负有部分的责任。继续举例来说明。

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.

25. Crackdown: 严厉的打击

26. Reliant on: 依赖于

27. deep pockets: a large amount of money that can be spent; great financial resources 家底，大量的资金资助

28. 前面一段的3个例子提到，各地都对广告追踪（基于消费者兴趣进行精准广告推送）这个事情出了政策。这个事情天然的违背了商人的逐利。因此，我们可以看到，以脸书为首的一众广告服务商都“感受到了寒气”。

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.

29. Insulated: 绝缘的

30. 但是呢，脸书的对手们，就是后面提到的那3家（亚马逊、苹果和微软），它们有自己的数据，因此不受以上政策的侵扰。作者继续通过这3家的具体操作来举例说明，为啥他们不受以上政策的影响。

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.

31. 要说之前的都是第一点的改变（就是广告不能追踪用户的习惯与兴趣）后，接下来是第二点。数字广告已经从传统的电视广告，过渡到广播和互联网电视。因为这些媒体能够更好的投放精准广告。同样是以那3家（亚马逊、苹果和微软）来举例说明，它们在这种改变下的操作。（真是背刺脸书和谷歌啊。）

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.

32. （继续背刺脸书和谷歌）这里作者继续举例说明，这3家（亚马逊、苹果和微软）在新媒体时代做出的努力，以及它们占据了很好的生态位。比如说声音的生意，这几家是如何发力，抢占细分市场的。

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.

33. 承接上一段的声音生意，作者这里列举了另一门好生意：游戏。作者在这段着重讲了微软在游戏领域的发力以及广告的植入（好狠）。

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.

34 终于来到最后的summary。作者说，数字广告已经无孔不入了。你们两家巨头就小心点吧。毕竟这个是充分竞争的市场。资本和市场的魅力就在于，永远有新进入者，也永远有落幕一颗。为了保持竞争，没人能独善其身，必须在商海不断打拼。

总结I

单词

1.impervious: incapable of being influenced, persuaded, or affected:不受影响的

3.Verities—verity: something that is true, as a principle, belief, idea, or statement:真理

6.Cyclical: 周期性的

7.Grabbing: grab

8.Rake: to gather, draw, or remove with a rake: Rake的名词是耙

10.incumbents: the holder of an office 责任者，在任者

11.well-placed: in a good position to do something

17.Unglamorous: not attractive or exciting 无魅力的，不刺激的

18.Monetise something: to earn money from something, especially a business or an asset (= something that a business owns) 赚钱，变现

21.Intrusive: adj. 改变，侵入的; 闯入的; 侵扰的; 烦扰的; 添加的; 插入的;

25.Crackdown: 严厉的打击

29.Insulated: 绝缘的

短语

9.amount to: add up

21.Intrusive: adj. 改变，侵入的; 闯入的; 侵扰的; 烦扰的; 添加的; 插入的;

22.Dabbling in: 涉猎; 涉足

26.Reliant on: 依赖于

27.deep pockets: a large amount of money that can be spent; great financial resources 家底，大量的资金资助

总结II

By E介俗人

1）随着商业变化越来越快，所有经营者不得不重新思考，你的对手会是谁？超市和菜贩从没想过他们的对手会是社区团购；谷歌和Facebook也从未想过它们的对手是一个从中国远渡重洋过去的app。

2）你的优势，以后也是你的优势吗？会不会在一定时间之后，变成了你的劣势？柯达、诺基亚等等的案例，永远值得讨论。

这也是为什么，大公司会把商业触角延伸到社会和生活的方方面面。比如说，Facebook的早鸟机制，让它能够及时发现新产品，去进行收购（或者打击）；鹅厂越来越投行化；几乎每个app都有金融功能，都想让你从这里借钱等等案例。越是大企业，越害怕被颠覆。

这里推荐《创新者的窘境》以及里面的“颠覆式创新”理论。看完后，或许你有更好的答案，或许你对上面两点总结有更深的思考。

拓展题：你认为百度的对手是小红书吗？