When Toyota launched a quirky Twitter campaign depicting¹ the car parts of its new Prius hybrid² using anime girls earlier this year, the digital advertising³ impact was instant.

丰田(Toyota)今年早些时候在Twitter上发布一个古怪的广告——用动漫少女描绘其新款普锐斯(Prius)混合动力车的部件，该数字广告的影响立竿见影。

The oddity and boldness attracted young Japanese users of social media that had not been effectively targeted by Toyota’s traditional, celebrity-heavy TV commercials.

这种怪异和大胆吸引了日本年轻的社交媒体用户，而他们正是丰田传统上依赖名人效应的电视广告从未有效触及过的群体。

As with almost all of Toyota’s ads, the campaign’s creator was Dentsu.

和丰田几乎所有广告一样，这则广告的设计公司是电通(Dentsu)。

The Prius tweets were not part of the overcharging scandal that shook Japan’s most powerful advertising agency last week.

普锐斯在Twitter上的广告与最近撼动这家日本最强大的广告公司的收费过高丑闻无关。

But it was not coincidental that Toyota was the company that discovered the irregularities.

但是丰田发现电通的违规行为并非巧合。

The revelation followed a meticulous⁴ analysis of digital ad impact by a company grappling to connect with a home market that has shown declining interest in owning cars.

正在艰难试图与表现出购车意愿下滑的本土市场沟通的丰田，对数字广告的影响进行了细致分析，结果发现上述问题。

The analysis was disappointing, prompting the automaker to question if whether Dentsu was placing the digital ads properly.

分析结果令人失望，使得这家汽车制造商质疑电通是否妥善投放了数字广告。

Since that first complaint from Toyota in July, Dentsu has identified 633 suspected cases of overcharging, amounting to at least $2.3m and affecting 111 clients.

自从丰田于7月提交首份投诉以来，电通确认了633例疑似收费过高的情况，涉及金额至少230万美元，影响111家客户。

Among them were 14 incidents where ads were not placed at all and other cases of incorrect placement periods and falsified reporting of ad performance.

其中有14例的广告根本没有投放，其他情况涉及不正确的投放时间和广告效果报告作假。

The scandal involves performance-based ads — a popular tool that allows advertisers to target specific types of consumers and pay fees depending on how much business was generated.

此次丑闻涉及基于效果的广告——这是一种较为流行的广告类型，可以让广告商针对特定类型消费者，并根据商业效果支付费用。

These ads were supposed to offer advertisers greater transparency and make it easier to measure effectiveness.

这些广告本应该为广告商提供更高的透明度，并且更容易衡量广告效果。

In practice, companies have struggled to judge whether these ads on websites and mobile devices have the desired impact.

但在实践中，公司很难判断这些在网站和移动设备上投放的广告是否产生了预期效果。

The story is not uniquely Japanese.

这种情况不只出现在日本。

The Dentsu discovery came days after Facebook admitted a mistake in measuring the time users spent viewing video ads on its social network.

在电通事件曝出前数日，Facebook承认在测算用户在其社交网站上观看视频广告的时间上存在错误。

The US ad industry is addressing concerns that ad agencies had been accepting cash rebates⁵ from media companies without informing their clients.

美国广告业正在应对广告公司在不通知客户的情况下收取媒体公司现金回扣的问题。

There are also cases of online advertising slots that are never seen by consumers due to fraud.

同时还存在在线广告根本没有被消费者看到的欺诈行为。

But in Japan, concerns about opaqueness⁶ are heightened by the close ties among ad agencies, TV broadcasters and other media companies, which makes price negotiations⁷ less transparent⁸.

但是在日本，人们对于广告业不透明的担忧因广告公司、电视广播公司和其他媒体公司之间的紧密联系而加剧，这种格局使得价格谈判更加不透明。

Dentsu controls one-quarter of Japan’s annual $61bn advertising market, and its domination of lucrative⁹ sponsorship slots such as the Olympics has made it difficult for dissatisfied clients to publicly voice their concerns.

日本广告市场的规模达到每年610亿美元，而电通控制着其中的四分之一。同时，它主导着奥运会等利润丰厚的赞助时段，这使得对其不满的客户很难公开表示担忧。

That puts the onus¹⁰ on companies to toughen their scrutiny¹¹ of agency management of digital ads, says Yumi Tanaka, JPMorgan analyst¹².

摩根大通(JPMorgan)的分析师田中由美(Yumi Tanaka)称，该问题促使企业加强审查代理商对数字广告的管理。

Dentsu has promised that a more independent division inside the company will monitor the performance data of digital ads in question.

电通承诺，公司内部一个比较独立的部门将监测受到质疑的数字广告的效果数据。

But that still lacks third-party verification, which may prompt clients to pressure Dentsu to disclose more real-time data rather than a summary version.

但这仍然缺乏第三方核实，可能会促使客户施压电通公开更多实时数据而不是简单的总结性数据。

It remains¹³ unclear whether the discrepancies¹⁴ in online ads were restricted to Dentsu or whether they plague the broader Japanese market.

尚不清楚在线广告的问题仅限于电通还是影响了整个日本市场。

Shinsuke Iwasa, Mizuho analyst, warns that rivals should not treat it as a Dentsu only problem, citing the complexity¹⁵ of the performance-based ads.

瑞穗(Mizuho)分析师岩佐新助(Shinsuke Iwasa)警告称，竞争对手不应该把它当做唯独电通存在的问题，并指出了效果广告的复杂性。

Dentsu has blamed lack of personnel and pressure to meet client demand for this new online advertising.

电通将问题归咎于缺乏人力，同时受到满足客户对这种新型在线广告需求的压力。

Performance ads posted 22 per cent year-on-year growth in 2015 versus¹⁶ a 0.3 increase for Japan’s total ad spending.

2015年，效果广告支出同比增长了22%，而日本整体广告支出仅增长了0.3%。

For now, the amount of overcharging is unlikely to have any significant impact on Dentsu’s earnings¹⁷.

目前，收费过高的问题不太可能会对电通的盈利产生显著影响。

Its chief financial officer has stressed that none of its clients have cut ties with the company, saying such outright¹⁸ rejections¹⁹ don’t normally happen in Japan.

电通首席财务官强调没有任何一家客户切断了与电通的联系，称诸如此类的绝交在日本并不常见。

Regardless of financial fallout, analysts²⁰ and companies hope that Dentsu will pursue international standards of transparency with the rigour it has shown in its ambitions to expand globally.

不管在财务上会带来多大影响，分析师和其他公司希望电通可以严格追求国际上对透明度的标准，正如它在全球扩张的野心中展现的严谨态度一样。

In addition to the ￡3.2bn acquisition of the UK’s Aegis²¹ in 2013, the agency has bought six companies in US, France, India, Australia and Brazil for undisclosed prices in September alone.

除了2013年以32亿英镑收购英国安吉斯(Aegis)外，电通还在今年9月以未公开价格收购了分别位于美国、法国、印度、澳大利亚和巴西的6家公司。

The reputational damage from the revelations should not be underestimated.

此次事件对电通的声誉造成的损害不应该被低估。

As a Dentsu client said: It’s not the sums involved, but a question of credibility.

正如电通一家客户所言：这与涉及金额无关，而是信誉问题。