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3000亿美元的难题：谷歌与Meta的双头垄断会就此终结吗？
The $300bn Google-Meta advertising 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.
过去十年，数字广告界流传两条公认的真理：一是高速增长的数字广告行业几乎不受经济周期影响；二是数字广告行业由谷歌（搜索广告领域）和Meta（社交媒体领域）两大霸主双头垄断。曾经有家竞对公司酸溜溜地把这种双头垄断比作19世纪晚期洛克菲勒对石油行业的统治。
Both of these verities are now being challenged simultaneously. As C’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.
然而， 这两条真理如今同时受到挑战。随着z国经济增速放缓，西方国家经济逐渐走向衰退，全球公司纷纷压缩营销预算。长期以来，大家都只是压缩非数字广告投入，而数字广告部分则不受影响，甚至投入还有增加。然而如今，非数字广告投入已经压无可压，这一思路也走到了尽头。上一季度，Meta的营收首次出现同比下降。而其竞争对手Snap（规模不及Meta）目前也裁员了五分之一。
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.
对Meta和谷歌的母公司Alphabet来说，经济周期也许还不是最糟糕的问题。两家公司可能曾希望扩大数字广告的市场份额，以应对数字广告业增速不断放缓的势头，但这一办法现在也行不通了。在广告领域，今年两家公司的总营收预计将达3000亿美元，而其四大竞争对手（亚马逊、微软、TikTok和苹果）的营收之和将接近这一数字的四分之一。听起来并不算多，但“老牌公司”仍然非常担忧：五年前这些竞争对手几乎没什么广告业务。此外，随着数字广告行业进入转型期，上述这几家后起之秀有望大赚一笔。
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 theiy C-owned rival. TikTok’s worldwide revenue will exceed $11bn this year and will be double that by 2024, forecasts eMarketer, a firm of analysts.
TikTok是数字广告行业表现最为惹眼的新星 ，面市仅五年，就已经从Meta旗下最大的两个社交平台Facebook和Instagram手里抢走了大量广告收入。被蚕食的市场份额之大，让两大平台不得不赶紧找Tiktok取取经。分析公司eMarketer预测，今年TikTok的全球收入将超过110亿美元，到2024年将在此基础上翻一番。
单词本
impervious 无动于衷的
duopoly 双头垄断
jealous 妒忌的
recession 衰退
incumbents 在位者
文章来源 | 经济学人
翻译 | 新译智能AI
编辑 | 王元杰
