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The great philosopher Homer Simpson once memorably described alcohol as “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Internet advertising is a bit like that — the funder of and terrible nuisance baked into everything you do online.
“伟大的哲学家霍默·辛普森(Homer Simpson)曾经令人难忘地将酒精描述为“生活中所有问题的源头和解决方案”。互联网广告和它有一点类似，它资助了你在网上进行的各种活动，但又给你带来很多惹人厌的麻烦。
Advertising sustains pretty much all the content you enjoy on the web, not least this very newspaper and its handsome, charming technology columnist; as I’ve argued before, many of the world’s most useful technologies may never have come about without online advertising. But at the same time, ads and the vast, hidden, data-sucking machinery that they depend on to track and profile you are routinely the most terrible thing about the Internet.
你在网络上享受的所有内容基本都是因为有广告收入才得以存在，包括这份你正在阅读的报纸和它又帅又有魅力的科技专栏作者；正如我曾经说过的，如果没有网络广告，世界上很多最有用的技术可能根本不会出现。但与此同时，广告及其赖以追踪你的信息和分析你的需求的巨大隐蔽的数据收集系统，却往往是互联网里最可怕的东西。
Now, more and more web users are escaping the daily bombardment of online advertising by installing an ad blocker. This simple, free software lets you roam the web without encountering any ads that shunt themselves between you and the content you want to read or watch. With an ad blocker, your web browser will generally run faster, you’ll waste less bandwidth downloading ads, and you’ll suffer fewer annoyances when navigating the Internet. You’ll wonder why everyone else in the world doesn’t turn to the dark side.
现在，有越来越多的网络用户通过安装广告拦截软件来躲避网络广告每天的狂轰滥炸。这类简单的免费软件可以让你在上网时不会碰到广告突然冒出来挡在你想阅读或观看的内容前面。装了拦截软件，网页浏览器总体上会运行得更快，浪费在加载广告上的带宽会更少，上网时也更少碰到让人恼火的情况。你会奇怪，其他人为什么不也加入到这个没有广告的世界来。
Well, everyone may be catching on. Ad blocking has been around for years, but adoption is now rising steeply, at a pace that some in the ad industry say could prove catastrophic for the economic structure underlying the web. That has spurred a debate about the ethic of ad blocking. Some publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content, we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads.
实际上，的确可能所有人都学会了用这种东西。广告拦截技术已经出现好几年，但现在它的使用人数正迅速窜升，其速度之快甚至让一些广告界人士认为觉得会对支撑网络的经济结构带来灾难性影响。这种情况引发了有关广告拦截正确与否的辩论。一些出版商和广告商表示，广告拦截违反了约束互联网的潜在约定——为了获取免费内容，我们都需要忍受不断出现的广告干扰。
But in the long run, there could be a hidden benefit to blocking ads for advertisers and publishers: Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst excesses. If blocking becomes widespread, the ad industry will be pushed to produce ads that are simpler, less invasive, and are far more transparent about the way they’re handling our data — or risk getting blocked forever if they fail.
但从长远看，广告拦截对广告商和出版商可能存在一个潜在利好：最终它也许可以免去广告业最大的浪费。如果广告拦截普及开来，将迫使广告商推出更简洁、侵扰性更弱的广告，他们处理有关我们的信息的方式也会比过去透明得多，否则就要面对被永远屏蔽的危险。
“It’s clear to us that the ads ecosystem is broken,” said Ben Williams, a spokesman for Eyeo, the German company that makes Adblock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software. “What we need is a sea change in the industry to get to a place where we have a good amount of better ads out there, ads that users accept.”
“显然，广告业的生态系统已经遭到了破坏，”Eyeo公司发言人本·威廉姆斯(Ben Williams)说道。这家德国公司开发了最流行的广告拦截软件Adblock Plus。“广告业需要有一场真正的变革，使他们能创造一大批用户能接受的更出色的广告。”
The industry may not have much time to wait. In a report last week, Adobe and PageFair, an Irish start-up that tracks ad-blocking, estimated that blockers will cost publishers nearly $22 billion in revenue this year. Nearly 200 million people worldwide regularly block ads, the report said, and the number is growing fast, increasing 41 percent globally in the last year.
留给这个行业的时间可能不多了。在上周发布的一份报告中，Adobe和追踪广告拦截情况的爱尔兰创业公司PageFair估计，广告拦截软件今年大概会让出版商损失将近220亿美元的收入。该报告还指出，全世界已有2亿人经常拦截广告，而且这一数字在快速增多，去年就提升了41%。
Today ad-blocking is mostly restricted to desktop web browsers. But iOS 9, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, will include support for ad blockers when it becomes available in the fall. Several ad-blocking firms are already creating apps for the new OS; when it’s out, you’ll simply download an ad blocker and no longer have to see ads on the iPhone’s version of Safari and possibly in other apps that open web links.
目前，广告屏蔽软件大多只能安装在电脑上。但苹果预计于秋季发布的最新移动操作系统iOS 9将能支持广告屏蔽功能。有几家公司已经在研发适用于这一新版系统的应用。等它发布以后，你只需下载一个广告拦截软件，就可以在iPhone的Safari浏览器上屏蔽广告了，也许还适用于能打开网络链接的其他应用。
“What’s likely to happen is that of the 200 million people who use ad blocking now, let’s say half of them have iPhones — they’re all going to install one of these things,” said Sean Blanchfield, the chief executive of PageFair. “Then they’ll start telling all their friends about this amazing app that saves your battery, saves your data and speeds up the web, and it’s likely to go viral. A lot of people are going to get accustomed to having an ad-free mobile experience.”
“很可能发生的情况是，现在使用广告拦截软件的2亿人中，就当其中有一半用iPhone好了，他们全都会在手机上安装一个这种软件，”PageFair的首席执行官西恩·布兰奇菲尔德(Sean Blanchfield)说道。“然后，他们会开始跟朋友谈起这个神奇的应用，能给你的手机省电，节省你的数据量，还会提高网速。它很可能会大面积流行起来。很多人将习惯于没有广告的移动上网体验。”
It’s important to note that PageFair has skin in this game, and some have accused the company of self-interested alarmism.
需要提醒的是，PageFair有利益关系牵扯其中。有人指责这家公司为达到自身利益而危言耸听。
PageFair also sells technology that allows web publishers to determine if users are running blocking software — and then serves them ads anyway, going around the blockers. PageFair’s software, which Mr. Blanchfield said is currently being tested with a number of large websites, circumvents ad blocking by using “low-level networking” technology that he declined to detail in order to stay ahead of ad companies.
PageFair同时销售的一种技术可以让出版商监测用户是否在使用广告拦截软件，然后绕过拦截仍向这些人发送广告。布兰奇菲尔德表示，目前有很多大型网站正在试用PageFair的软件，可以通过“低层次联网”技术帮助客户绕过拦截。为了能让自己在广告公司中保持领先，他拒绝透露这项技术的细节。
Showing ads to people who have downloaded ad blockers sounds a little spammy. But in a twist, it may also lead to better ads. Here’s how: PageFair’s canny strategy to mitigate users’ outrage is that it will only show ads that aren’t “intrusive,” Mr. Blanchfield said. That means the ads won’t feature animations, they won’t block content, and they won’t load “trackers” that monitor and report back to some unknown server what you do on a web page.
向安装广告拦截软件的用户展示广告，这听起来也有点像发垃圾邮件。但话说回来，它也可能会带来更好的广告体验。据布兰奇菲尔德透露，PageFair使用了一种精明的策略，可以减少用户的愤怒情绪，即只显示那些没有“侵扰性”的广告。也就是说，这些广告不会有动画效果，不会遮挡页面内容，也不会加载会监视页面活动并向乱七八糟的未知服务器汇报的“追踪工具”。
By requiring companies to run ads that are simple and transparent, Mr. Blanchfield said PageFair would return sanity to the ad business. “We as an industry have lost the trust of our users, who are right — there are a lot of very bad ads out there,” he said. “We have one shot as an industry to get this right.”
兰奇菲尔德说，通过要求公司只打出简单干净的广告，PageFair可以给广告业带来健全的生态。“这个行业失去了用户的信任，而用户是对的，网络上的确有很多糟糕透顶的广告，”他说。“我们有这样一次机会，可以改变这种状况。”
PageFair is just one of the firms trying to create an ecosystem that produces better ads. After wrestling with the implications of their software, the founders of AdBlock Plus created an initiative called “Acceptable Ads,” which sets out a standard for ads that the software will let users see despite having ad-blocking turned on. These ads are also low-fi — they can’t be animated or cover up a page’s content. (Eyeo charges some large companies a fee to show these ads; Google, for instance, pays Eyeo to have its search ads show up for Adblock Plus users.)
有许多公司试图创造一个可以产生更好广告产品的生态系统，PageFair只是其中之一。为克服自身产品给行业带来的不良影响，开发AdBlock Plus软件的Eyeo公司发起了一项名为“能接受的广告”的倡议，设立了一个标准，那些达到标准的广告，可以被所有用户看到，即使他们安装了广告拦截软件。同时，这类广告也是低保真的，不能是动画，也不能覆盖整个页面。（Eyeo会向显示这类广告的一些大公司收取费用，比如谷歌就给Eyeo付费以便它的搜索广告能让AdBlock Plus用户看到。）
Then there’s Ghostery, which makes a plug-in that lets users find and block online tracking tools — the code in a page that sends data about your surfing habits to marketers. According to the company, the number of such trackers has exploded in recent years because marketing software used to analyze consumer behavior has become much easier to use. Ghostery reported 22 trackers on a page for Slate, 18 on one for Business Insider, 22 at The Wall Street Journal, and 26 for the New York Times.
还有插件开发商Ghostery。这家公司开发的一种插件能让用户找到并拦截在线追踪工具，也就是可以把有关用户浏览习惯的数据发送给营销机构的网页代码。该公司称，最近几年，因为用来分析消费者行为的营销软件变得好用多了，这种追踪工具的数量呈爆发式增长。Ghostery报告称，分别在Slate、“商业内幕”(Business Insider)、《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)网站和《纽约时报》网站的一个页面上发现了22、18、22和26个追踪工具。
Not only do these trackers represent efforts to profile you, but they also waste time — when you see a web page stuck loading, you can usually blame one of these trackers. Ghostery aims to fix that. For a fee, the company reports to site owners which trackers are slowing down pages — which in turn may improve how ads are served. It will also soon unveil a “Ghostery score” that will show users which sites to trust based on the trackers that sites are loading up.
这些追踪工具不仅反映出，有人在试图归纳你的特征，而且还会浪费时间。当你看到某个网页一直在加载时，通常都是这种追踪工具造成的。Ghostery致力于解决这个问题。该公司会告诉网站的经营者，是哪些追踪工具降低了网页的加载速度，并为此收取一定费用。这种做法反过来可能会改善广告的投放效果。该公司很快还将推出一种“Ghostery评分”，根据网站加载的追踪工具，来告诉用户哪些网站值得信赖。
The pattern here is ironic: PageFair, AdBlock Plus and Ghostery, which all depend to some extent on consumers’ interest in blocking ads, are also all pushing innovative efforts to create better ads.
这种模式颇具讽刺意味：PageFair、AdBlock Plus和Ghostery都在一定程度上依赖于消费者对拦截广告的兴趣，同时又都在推动旨在制作出更好的广告的创新行动。
Even some in the ad industry acknowledge this dynamic. Scott Cunningham, the general manager of the technology lab for the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade group that comes up with online advertising standards, said his group had already begun to respond to users who are downloading the software; most recently, he said, the bureau has been working to create clearer guidelines for the trackers’ coded web pages.
就连广告业的一些从业者也认识到了这种局面。制定网络广告标准的行业团体互联网广告局(Internet Advertising Bureau)的技术实验室总经理斯科特·坎宁安(Scott Cunningham)表示，他所在的组织已经开始向下载相关软件的用户作出回应。他说，互联网广告局最近一直在努力，针对嵌入追踪工具的网页，制定更清晰的指导方针。
“As we’ve watched the incidence rate of ad blocking, we’ve said, ‘O.K., it’s time for us to put the clamps onto some of the areas we haven’t addressed yet,’” Mr. Cunningham said.
“因为看到了广告拦截的发生频率，我们考虑，‘好吧，是时候对以前没应对过的领域做一些限制了，”坎宁安说。
That suggests another practical utility of ad blocking — it appears to be an effective form of protest. For better ads tomorrow, block ads today.
这显示出了广告拦截的另一个实用价值：它似乎是一种有效的抗议形式。为了明天能有更好的广告，就得拦截今天的广告。
