2021年经济学人 手机大数据窥探隐私,苹果新规来帮忙(4)（在线收听）

The inability to share data is forcing advertisers to come up with new ruses. One is to bypass rules banning data transfers between ad-tech companies by consolidating. In February AppLovin, a mobile-software firm, acquired Adjust, which provides mobile-ad attribution, reportedly for $1bn. Another is to ask users to “sign in”, which lets an app monitor their behaviour with no need for IDFAS. And instead of targeting individuals, marketers can target broader interest groups—coffee lovers, Daily Mail readers, and so on—much as they did in the pre-internet age. It’s “back to the future”, says Mr Wieser.

由于无法共享数据，广告商不得不另谋出路。一种途径是广告科技公司通过合并来避开禁止公司之间互通数据的规定。今年2月，移动软件公司AppLovin收购了提供移动广告归因的Adjust，据传收购价格为10亿美元。另一种途径是要求用户“登录”，应用程序就可以在无需获取广告商识别码权限的情况下监控用户行为。营销商还可以像前互联网时代所做的那样，将广告投放瞄准更广泛的兴趣群体，如咖啡爱好者、每日邮报读者等，而非针对个人。维瑟表示，这是“回到未来”之举。

Stripped of accurate ways of measuring their impact, “direct-response ads” that require consumers to take an action (like clicking) lose their appeal. Advertisers will again have to gauge ads’ effectiveness by looking for a rise in sales in a region where an ad ran but not elsewhere. Because campaigns that promote general awareness of a brand never benefited as much from tracking, platforms which mostly attract brand advertising will not feel much difference. Snap, whose social network, popular with teenagers, belongs to that group, posted a year-on-year rise in revenues of 66% in the first quarter.

由于被剥夺了准确衡量成效的方法，要求消费者采取行动（如点击）的“直接反应广告”也失去了吸引力。广告商将不得不通过观测广告投放特定地区（而非其他地方）的销量增长，来再次衡量广告效果。因为提升品牌知名度的广告活动从来没有很大受益于数据跟踪，因此主要吸引品牌广告的平台也不会受到太大波及。深受青少年欢迎的社交网络Snap便属于这类平台，其今年第一季度收入同比增长66%。

The less advertisers know about their audience, the costlier advertising will become. Facebook has argued this will hurt small businesses. It is probably right, thinks William Merchan of Pathmatics, a data company. Digital ads promise to cut waste in media buys, he says. Now that advertisers are again in the dark about which half of their budget is wasted, they are “going to have to just spend more”.

广告商对他们的消费者了解越少，广告成本就会越高。Facebook辩称，苹果新规将损害小型企业。数据公司Pathmatics的威廉·梅尔科认为，Facebook的说法可能是对的。他说，数字广告可保证减少广告经费的浪费。如今，广告商们又再次一无所知，不知道哪一半的预算被浪费了的他们“将不得不花更多的钱”。