2021年经济学人 手机大数据窥探隐私,苹果新规来帮忙(2)（在线收听）

Stronger privacy protections may make their ads less effective. In 2018 the EU imposed its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and America’s most-populous state introduced the California Consumer Privacy Act. Both made it harder to harvest users’ data. Since 2020 Apple’s Safari web browser has blocked the “cookies” that advertisers use to see what people get up to online. Google has similar plans for its more popular Chrome browser.

加强隐私保护可能会降低营销商的广告效果。2018年，欧盟实施了《通用数据保护条例》（GDPR），美国人口最多的州也出台了《加州消费者隐私法案》。这两条法案的推出致使用户数据收集变得更加困难。自2020年以来，苹果网络浏览器Safari已经屏蔽了广告商用来窥视人们上网行为的“cookies”。而谷歌对其当红浏览器Chrome也有类似的计划。

Apple’s latest change makes explicit an option that was previously hidden deep in its phones’ settings. Users can forbid apps to access their “identifier for advertisers” (IDFA) code, which singles out their device, and from tracking their activity across other firms’ apps and websites. It amounts to a “seismic shift” in in-app advertising, says Jon Mew, head of the Internet Advertising Bureau, an industry body.

苹果的最新更新让之前隐藏在手机设置深处的选项直观明确。用户可以禁止应用程序访问自己的广告客户标识符（IDFA，可单独识别自己的设备），也可以禁止应用程序通过其他公司的应用程序和网站跟踪自己的活动。行业组织互联网广告局负责人乔恩?缪表示，此次更新堪称应用内嵌广告界的剧变。

The platforms best-placed to survive the shake-out are those with lots of consumer data of their own. Google’s $147bn ad business gets most of the information it needs from the terms users type into its search bar. Amazon, whose digital-ad business is the third-largest and growing fast, has the advantage of being able to track what people buy after seeing ads on its site—a “closed loop”, as marketers call it. Apple knows where iPhone-users go, what time they wake up and much besides. It has a small but growing ad business, selling prominence in its app store, for instance.

那些自身拥有大量消费者数据的平台最有可能在这次大洗牌中幸免于难。谷歌在广告业务上投入1470亿美元，它获取大部分需要信息的渠道是通过用户在其搜索栏中输入的关键词。亚马逊的数字广告业务位居世界第三且增长迅速，其优势在于能够跟踪用户在其网站上看到广告后购买的商品——营销人员称之为“闭环”。苹果掌握了大量的iPhone用户数据，包括他们的出行以及起床时间。苹果的广告业务规模虽小，但涨势惊人，比如在应用程序商店中销售突出的产品。