2021年经济学人 手机大数据窥探隐私,苹果新规来帮忙(1)（在线收听）

Business

商业版块

Digital advertising

数字广告

Flying blind

两眼一摸黑

Apple’s privacy rules force marketers to find new ways to target ads

苹果的隐私规则迫使营销商在精准投放广告上另谋出路

Online shoppers often feel they are being watched. Put an item in your basket but fail to buy it, and it may follow you plaintively around the internet for days. Announce your engagement on social media and you will be hit with adverts for the honeymoon. As you turn 40, expect the attention of elasticated-trouser merchants.

网购者常常觉得自己被监视了。当你把一件商品放进购物车却没买，那接下来的几天里，上网冲浪的你就会一直受到这个商品的苦苦纠缠。在社交媒体上宣布订婚消息的你将受到蜜月广告轰炸。40岁的你估计会引起弹力裤卖家的注意。

On April 26th Apple, which supplies one-fifth of the world’s smartphones and around half of America’s, introduced a software update that will end much of this snooping. Its latest mobile operating system forces apps to ask users if they want to be tracked. Many will decline. It is the latest privacy move forcing marketers to rethink how they target online ads.

供应全球五分之一和美国约一半智能手机的苹果公司在4月26日推出了一次软件更新，将在很大程度上结束这种窥探行为。其最新的移动操作系统迫使应用程序询问用户是否想要被追踪。许多用户都会拒绝。苹果公司最新的隐私举措将迫使营销商重新考虑如何精准投放在线广告。

By micro-profiling audiences and monitoring their behaviour, digital-ad platforms claim to solve advertisers’ age-old quandary of not knowing which half of their budget is being wasted. In the past decade digital ads have gone from less than 20% of the global ad market to more than 60%, according to GroupM, the world’s largest media buyer. Even last year, amid the pandemic, the business grew by 9%. As lockdowns ease it is going gangbusters. On April 27th Alphabet, Google’s parent company and the world’s biggest digital-ad platform, reported first-quarter advertising revenues up by 34%, year on year. The next day Facebook, the second-largest, said its own ad sales had grown by 46%.

数字广告平台声称，通过对用户进行微观分析和行为监测，可以解决广告商长期以来的窘境，即不知道自己一半的预算被浪费在了哪里。全球最大的媒体采购机构GroupM的数据显示，过去十年，数字广告在全球广告市场的份额从不足20%上升到了60%以上。即使在去年疫情期间，数字广告业务也增长了9%。随着封锁放松，数字广告还将风头无两。4月27日，谷歌母公司兼全球最大的数字广告平台Alphabet公布，其第一季度广告收入同比增长了34%。第二大数字广告公司Facebook也在第二天表示，其广告销售额同比增长了46%。