DISRUPTING THE MEDIA INDUSTRY IS EASY. Not long ago, I moused over to AdBlockPlus.org, clicked on a green button that said, “Install for Safari,” and fewer than 10 seconds later, ads had vanished. All of them. Goodbye iPad ad that unfurled down my screen. Goodbye blinking mattress ads. Goodbye car ad following me from site to site. This immediately became Web surfing nirvana: pages loaded faster, my browser stopped randomly crashing, my whole computer ran better. The Adblocker Plus plugin even told me how many ads I’ve dodged in the last couple of months: more than 35,000 and counting.
要瓦解現今媒體產業是容易的。不久之前，我逛到AdBlockPlus.org，當我按下綠色按鈕，執行安裝指令，不到幾秒鐘的時間，所有的廣告就消失了，無論是我iPad上的廣告、還是閃爍的床墊廣告，還有揮之不去的汽車廣告，全都不見了。對網路族群來說，沒什麼比這更值得慶祝，網頁讀取變快，瀏覽器也不再不定時當機，整台電腦更順暢了。此外，Adblocker Plus的軟體還告訴我，過去幾個月已幫我過濾超過35000多個廣告。
I am not alone in my love for ad blocking. Every friend I tell about it thanks me with extreme enthusiasm, as if I’d just changed their flat tire. This is how ad blocking spreads: one person discovers the blissful Web, then tells everyone they know. A phenomenon that began several years ago in online gaming circles—you don’t want to get between gamers and their zombies—has swept into the mainstream. A new report from Adobe and one of several startups helping publishers fight ad blocking shows that 198 million people globally are now blocking ads, up 41 percent from 2014. In the US, ad blocking grew 48 percent from last year, to 45 million users. A recent Reuters Institute Digital News survey put the numbers even higher, saying that almost half of all US internet users block ads.
我不是唯一為此感到興奮的人，每位聽完我分享的朋友，都感謝我，彷彿我幫他們換掉洩氣的輪胎一樣。這是「廣告過濾」所要傳達的：當一個人發現它的妙處，也會讓所有人都知道它的好。這種現象，幾年前就曾在線上遊戲中出現過，當你在進行遊戲時，絕不會想在眾多玩家和殭屍外，還得面對擾人的廣告。根據一份由軟體公司Adobe，和一家協助媒體業者對抗廣告過濾的新創公司，所共同提出的報告，全球有1億9800萬用戶都在使用廣告過濾工具，較2014年高出41%。在美國，廣告過濾從去年開始就成長48%，約4500萬用戶。牛津大學路透新聞研究所（Reuters Institute Digital News）調查結果更驚人，美國將近一半的網路使用者都在使用廣告過濾功能。
Taken alone, my 35,000-plus blocked ads probably aren’t doing much damage to the news industry; maybe a campaign reporter will be forced to stay in a Marriott Courtyard instead of the W. (Sorry.) But taken together, ad blockers are hitting publishers in their digital guts. Adobe says that $21.8 billion in global ad revenue will be blocked this year.
其實，被我過濾掉的35000多個廣告，對新聞產業不會造成多大的影響（頂多一個政治記者會被迫留在萬怡酒店，而不是W飯店），但就結果來看，廣告過濾軟體正打擊著媒體業者的信心。Adobe就表示，今年全球廣告市場，會因為廣告過濾軟體的使用，而損失218億的收入。
Users are inadvertently putting their favorite websites out of business.
網路使用者總是不經意的，把廣告這種商業行為，排除在自己最喜愛的網站外。
The damage is more than financial. It’s existential. The rise of ad blocking comes just as the media industry had settled on a revenue model to move forward after years of disruption and pain. The new model looked a lot like the old one: circulation revenue plus ad revenue equals sustainability. With so few people willing to pay for news, advertising was supposed to bring up the rear. But publishers seem to have totally overlooked the fact that, while print ads were relatively innocuous and unavoidable, digital ads are different. They aren’t static. They blink. They follow. They irritate. And readers can do what they never could in print: erase them. Now, a frightening reckoning is at hand, a perhaps terminal diagnosis that few seem willing to accept or even acknowledge.
廣告過濾所造成的傷害，不僅限於財務上，還包括其所衍生的問題。廣告過濾的興起，適逢媒體產業為了擺脫過去慘淡的一年，而邁向立基於營收模式的階段。這個新模式看起來沒有什麼不同：「循環獲利加上廣告收益，等於企業永續性」。只有少數人願意花錢看新聞，廣告被認為是靜陪末座的，所以出版業己認清了事實，即便平面廣告市場所受到的傷害相對較小，也無可避免，但數位廣告市場是截然不同的。他們不是靜態的，而是隨市場高低起伏而不斷變動，有時也令人惱怒的。很多讀者可以在數位空間裡，完成從未意想到的事。例如，刪除不想要內容。現在，即便一個驚人時刻將到來，但僅有少數人願意面對這個事實。
“For publishers, ad blockers are the elephant in the room,” media analyst Frederic Filloux wrote a few months ago. “Everybody sees them, no one talks about it.” I asked numerous publishers and ad platforms how much ad blocking they were seeing and what they were doing about it. Most didn’t reply. A Google spokeswoman did tell me this: “We believe that ads help fund free services and content on the Web. For our part, we’re continuing to invest in ad experiences that are relevant and useful for users, ensuring that users have choice over their ad experiences online, and helping publishers continue to fund their content.”
媒體分析家Frederic Filloux在幾個月前寫下：「對於媒體業者來說，廣告過濾就像是顯而未見的事，每個人都知道，但是沒人願意談論它。」我問了很多媒體業者和廣告平台業者，他們對廣告過濾的想法，及有何因應的措施，大部分人都沒回覆我。Google的一位發言人告訴我：「我們相信，廣告可以幫忙募集網路上免費的服務和內容。對Google來說，我們仍關注著，與使用者相關及有益處的廣告體驗上，才能確保用戶在線上廣告保有選擇，也幫助媒體業者繼續贊助他們的內容。」
The problem is that surveys show many internet users, particularly younger ones, have already decided they hate online ads. As one woman said in the Reuters report, “Online ads are obtrusive, obnoxious, annoying.” And few feel an obligation to help publishers out. Some 80 percent of internet users polled by Adobe said they weren’t willing to pay even a small fee to make ads disappear. So: Readers hate online ads, most users are unwilling to subscribe online (only 11 percent do, according to the Reuters study), and few would pay to make ads go away. No wonder the publishers didn’t get back to me.
調查指出，有許多網路使用者，尤其是年輕族群，已表明他們討厭線上廣告。一位在路透社報導中受訪的女性說到：「線上廣告是很突兀、令人討厭及擾人的。」而且僅有少數人覺得需要幫媒體業者擺脫困擾。Adobe做了一個民調，約80%的線上用戶說他們不願意花小錢讓廣告消失，代表著讀者討厭線上廣告，但是大部份的用戶不願意線上訂閱來取消廣告（根據路透社的研究，只有11%的人願意），而僅有少部份人願意花錢，也難怪沒有媒體業者想回覆我的問題。
Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don’t work or are cumbersome to install. Back in March, a Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that “the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth” of ad blockers. But three months later, at its annual developer conference, Apple revealed that its new operating system, scheduled for release this fall, will allow ad blocking on Safari. Given Apple’s mobile dominance, the implications are potentially terrifying. Wired’s headline: “Apple’s support of ad blocking may upend how the Web works.”
媒體業者把希望寄託在日漸成長的手機上，因為廣告過濾軟體在手機上，既無法見到成效，也不易安裝。今年3月時，一位Wells Fargo分析家在報告中寫下：「行動裝置對於廣告過濾的成長，必定會造成一些阻礙。」但三個月後，Apple在年度開發者會議上，宣告今年秋季發表的作業系統，將會允許旗下瀏覽器搭載廣告過濾功能。有鑑於Apple在業界的地位，這個暗示確實造成潛在的恐慌。Wired’s的頭條新聞是這麼說的：「有了Apple做後盾，將顛覆現有的網路生態。」
THERE ARE FIVE OR SIX ad blockers on the market, but the biggest player—with more than 60 million active users—is Adblock Plus, part of a German company called Eyeo. It doesn’t take a technology wizard to figure out how its product, and other ad blockers, work. Without an ad blocker installed, when a user clicks on a website, the site quickly connects to ad servers that display ads in various spots on the page. Ad blockers put a wall between the website and server, stopping ads in their tracks. Eyeo has been sued in German courts by publishers who argued Adblock Plus users shouldn’t be able to block ads on their sites. The publishers lost.
目前市場約有5至6個廣告過濾軟體，但最有名的，莫過於擁有超過6000萬用戶的Adblock Plus－隸屬於一間德國公司Eyeo。我們不需求助科技顧問，也能了解Eyeo和其它家產品的特性，我們已見識到它的能耐了。如果沒有安裝廣告過濾軟體，當用戶在瀏覽網頁時，網站會自動連結到廣告業者伺服器，而在頁面上出現各種廣告。過濾軟體設計一道防火牆，阻擋網站和伺服器的連結，讓廣告無法追蹤網站。Eyeo在德國已經被媒體業者提告，因為媒體業者認為Eyeo沒有權力阻止廣告在網站上出現，結果就是，媒體業者敗訴了。
In many ways, Adblock Plus has become the internet’s advertising sheriff. That’s because its software, by default, allows some ads through its firewall—ads it deems “acceptable,” meeting a series of strict criteria it came up with in conversation with internet users around the world. The criteria essentially eliminate most of the ads on the market today, rolling back ad technology to the 1990s: text only, no animations, no popovers, no placement in the flow of text. In the two months since I’ve installed the software, I don’t recall seeing any ads that meet the criteria.
從各方面來看，Adblock Plus已經成為網路安全的守護者，它的軟體允許部分廣告進入防火牆（軟體認為這些廣告可以接受的），而這些廣告因為通過一連串嚴格的審核，而可以顯示在世界各地用戶的網路上。這樣的標準消除了現今市場上大部分的廣告，我們回想一下1990年代的廣告技術－只有文字，沒有動畫，如此簡單。安裝了這套軟體兩個月來，我已經不記得有任何廣告是可以符合這個標準的。
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作者：Michael Rosenwald
編譯：朱弘川
原文網址：http://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/will_ad_blockers_kill_the_digital_media_industry.php
