新闻媒体将对广告拦截软件说“不”

People using ad-blocking software who visited the The New York Times website in March were shown a message. This read: “The best things in life aren’t free”. It went on to explain that “advertising¹ helps us fund our journalism²” and gave the visitor two options to read the newspaper’s online content: disable their ad-blocking software or pay for a subscription³.

3月份，那些访问《纽约时报》(New York Times)网站时使用广告拦截软件的人们看到了这样一则消息：“生活中最美好的事物都不是免费的”。接着它解释道“广告资助着我们的报道”。随后，该网站给访问者两个选择去阅读报纸的线上内容：禁用他们的广告拦截软件或为订阅付费。

Many angry internet users took to sites such as Twitter and Reddit to vent⁴ their frustrations⁵: “It’s not OK to show me ads that detract from your website design and make it ugly,” said one. Others argued that ads were more than just an irritation⁶ as they could compromise user privacy and security.

许多愤懑的网友跑到Twitter和Reddit这类网站上泄愤：“让我看那些有损贵网站设计并让它看起来很丑的广告可不怎么样，”一位网友说。其他人认为广告不仅惹人讨厌还可能危及用户的隐私和安全。

Despite this opposition⁷, the newspaper is pressing ahead with plans to block the blockers. Dozens of other global media companies are preparing to do the same to protect their online revenues from the rapid and unrelenting rise of ad blocking.

尽管面对这样的反对，这家报纸仍在加紧推行阻止拦截软件的计划。其他许多全球性媒体也准备采取相同措施，以保护其在线收入不受迅猛崛起的广告拦截技术的危害。

PageFair, a company that helps publishers overcome ad-blocking software, had estimated that more than 200m people now use some form of blocker on their laptop or desktop⁸ computers, as do more than 420m of the world’s 1.8bn smartphone users.

PageFair，一家帮助出版商应对广告拦截软件的公司，评估出目前有超过2亿人在他们的笔记本电脑或台式电脑上使用某种形式的拦截软件，全球18亿智能手机用户中有超过4.2亿人也是如此。

For years, there was little publishers could do about people using programs such as Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin, which are free to download and highly effective at eliminating ads from web pages. In most cases, the software works by blocking communication between a web browser⁹ and a “blacklist” of internet addresses that are known to serve ads. As a second line of attack, blocking software can also prevent the browser from executing certain types of code associated with ads. However, there is an Achilles heel: blockers cannot work if a website serves both ads and content from a single computer server and shields both using techniques such as encryption. In such circumstances, ad blocking software cannot block the ads without also blocking the content.

多年来，对于人们使用Adblock Plus与uBlock Origin这类程序，出版商无能为力，这些程序都是免费下载的，并能非常有效地消除来自网页的广告。大多数情况下，这类软件会阻止浏览器连接到一系列已知的投放广告的网址，这些网址被列入一份“黑名单”中。作为第二道防线，拦截软件还能阻止浏览器执行与广告相关的某些类型的代码。然而，有一个致命弱点：如果某网站由一个计算机服务器同时提供广告和内容，并用加密之类的技术保护两者，拦截软件就无法奏效。这种情况下，广告拦截软件就不能只屏蔽广告而不屏蔽内容。

A flurry of start-ups — including Sourcepoint and Secret Media — now offer publishers ways to circumvent¹⁰ ad-blocking software.

一系列初创企业——包括Sourcepoint和Secret Media——现在均面向出版商提供规避广告拦截软件的方案。

Another of these, Oriel, in June launched an anti-ad-blocking tool for WordPress, the content management system and blogging platform used by more than 60m websites. This will allow small bloggers as well as large media companies to take action against blocker software.

另一家公司，Oriel，6月份面向内容管理系统和博客平台WordPress推出了一个反广告拦截工具，目前有超过6000万的网站在使用WordPress。由此，不论小博主还是大型媒体公司，对拦截软件都将能采取反制措施了。

Aidan Joyce, chief executive of Oriel, says: “Ad-blocking technology is a blunt instrument which, by default, makes no differentiation¹¹ between poor and quality advertising. Most ad-blocking users do not object to a reasonable advertising experience in return for quality free content.”

Oriel的首席执行官艾丹•乔伊斯(Aidan Joyce)说：“广告拦截技术十分粗暴，基于默认，它对劣质和优质的广告不加区分。多数广告拦截软件的使用者并不会反对阅览适当的广告来换取免费高质量内容。”

The New York Times found in its March experiment that more than 40 per cent of adblock users agreed to “whitelist” the website — thereby¹² allowing ads to appear on their screens — so they could see the content.

《纽约时报》在其3月份的试验中发现，超过40%的广告拦截软件使用者同意将该网站放入“白名单”——由此允许广告在他们的屏幕上显示——这样他们便可以阅览内容。

Mark Thompson, the group’s chief executive, said at a conference in June: “No one who refuses to contribute to the creation of high-quality journalism has the right to consume it. We are not there yet but, if we judge that it will strengthen the long-term prospects¹³ of that journalism to prevent non-subscribers who employ ad blockers and refuse to whitelist us from reading it, we’ll do it.”

《纽约时报》首席执行官马克•汤普森(Mark Thompson)在6月份的一个会议上说：“拒绝为创作高质量的报道做出贡献的人没有权利消费它。我们还没有不让那些使用广告拦截软件、并拒绝将我们列入白名单的非订阅用户阅读我们的报道，但是，如果我们断定这样做会增进新闻事业的长远发展，我们就会这样做。”

To cater¹⁴ for people who hate advertising, the news organisation¹⁵ plans to introduce a higher-priced, advertisement-free subscription.

为满足讨厌广告的人，这家新闻机构计划推出一份价格更高、但没有广告的订阅。

Ben Barokas, chief executive of Sourcepoint, predicts that most publishers will have adopted some kind of technology to circumvent ad blockers by 2020. In his view, media groups should offer consumers a range of different ways to access content, including for-free with ads, micropayments and subscriptions¹⁶.

Sourcepoint的首席执行官本•巴罗卡斯(Ben Barokas)预言，到2020年多数出版商将采用某种规避广告拦截软件的技术。他认为，传媒集团应提供给消费者一系列不同的方法去获取内容，包括带广告免费阅读、微支付阅读及付费订阅。

“Ad blocking is a canary in the coal mine for the media industry to be more transactional and more transparent¹⁷ in its relationship with consumers,” Mr Barokas says.

“广告屏蔽好比矿井里的金丝雀，让媒体行业与消费者的关系更具交易性也更加透明，”巴罗卡斯说。

However, Sean Blanchfield, chief executive of PageFair, argues that publishers need to exercise care in how they use ad-blocker circumvention¹⁸ technology. He warns that such technology should not be used to preserve the status quo.

然而，PageFair的首席执行官西恩•布兰奇菲尔德(Sean Blanchfield)认为，对于如何运用规避广告拦截软件的技术，出版者需格外谨慎。他警告说这种技术不应用于维持现状。

“Users have fundamental, legitimate¹⁹ concerns,” he says. “Ads that are served today have serious privacy and security problems.”

“用户们的顾虑是最基本的，也是合情合理的，”他说。“目前的广告投放确实存在严重的隐私安全问题。”

Mr Blanchfield says that PageFair aims to help publishers “redefine the advertising experience in a way that the typical ad-block user wouldn’t find objectionable”.

布兰奇菲尔德说PageFair致力于帮出版者“以一种令典型广告拦截器用户不会反感的方式重新界定广告体验。”

He argues that publishers who fail to improve the ads they serve will alienate²⁰ people and drive them towards platforms such as Facebook.

他认为那些未能改进自身广告的出版商，将会疏远用户并将他们导向Facebook这类平台。

Publishers that ban ad blockers also risk losing their audience to rivals that take a more permissive stance. In some ways that matters little, since ad-block users do not generate ad revenues. But this argument ignores the fact that internet users are not just passive consumers; they often help distribute a publisher’s content by sharing links with friends through email, forums²¹ and social media.

禁用广告拦截软件的出版商们，也面临着读者向更宽容的竞争对手流失的风险。某种意义上而言那无关紧要，因为使用广告拦截软件的用户并不会带来广告收入。但是这一说法忽略了互联网用户不仅仅是被动消费者的事实；他们经常通过电子邮件、论坛及社交媒体向朋友们分享链接，从而帮出版商传播内容。

More than half of UK adults using an ad blocker said they would switch it off if doing so was the only way to access a website, according to a survey by YouGov for the Interactive²² Advertising Bureau. But 39 per cent said they would not disable their ad blocker for any site.

舆观(YouGov)为美国互动广告局(Interactive Advertising Bureau)所做的一份调查显示，在使用广告拦截软件的英国成年人中，有超过半数的人表示，如果关闭拦截软件是访问某网站的唯一办法，那他们会关掉它。但也有39%的人说他们不会为任何网站禁用自己的广告拦截软件。

Meanwhile, Sweden’s biggest publishers will join forces next month to call the ad blockers’ bluff²³. In a month-long experiment the publishers will collectively block people who use ad blocking software. The idea is that by acting²⁴ en masse, they will be able to turn the ad-blocking tide.

与此同时，瑞典几个最大的出版商下个月将联手叫板广告拦截软件。在为期一个月的试验中，这些出版商将一起屏蔽使用广告拦截软件的人。他们希望通过集体行动，可以扭转广告拦截的局面。