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  3. An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted — the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet

An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted — the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet

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问题    An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted — the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim "behavioural" ads at those most likely to buy.
   In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such finegrained information: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?
   In December 2010 America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed adding a "do not track" (DNT) option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari both offer DNT; Google’s Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests.
   On May 31st Microsoft set off the row. It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear with Windows 8, would have DNT as a default.
   Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. People will not get fewer ads, he says. "They’ll get less meaningful, less targeted ads."
   It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioural ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft’s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway.
   Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comply with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies almost wholly on advertising, it has chosen an indirect method: There is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for Windows 8 — though the firm has compared some of its other products favourably with Google’s on that count before. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, blogged: "We believe consumers should have more control." Could it really be that simple?
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答案 有句老话说，花在广告上的钱有一半都浪费了——但问题在于没有人知道是哪一半。在互联网时代，浪费的这部分资金至少在理论上可以大幅减少。通过监视用户在网上搜索的关键词、点击的链接以及发表的言论，企业可以向那些最有可能购买产品的用户投放“行为定向”广告。 在过去的几周里，一场争论显示了这些精准信息对于广告商的价值：广告商应该假定人们乐于任人记录其网上行踪并乐于接受行为定向广告吗?或者广告商是否应该得到用户明确的许可? 2010年12月，美国联邦商务委员会(FTC)提议将“请勿跟踪”(DNT)选项加入网络浏览器，这样用户可以告知广告商他们不想被跟踪。微软的IE浏览器和苹果的Safari浏览器都有“请勿跟踪”选项；谷歌的Chrome浏览器今年也会提供这个选项。2月份，FTC和数字广告联盟(DAA)达成共识：该行业将尽快响应“请勿跟踪”的要求。 5月31日，微软引发了那场争论，宣称即将与Windows 8一起推出的IE 10版本会把“请勿跟踪”作为默认设置。 广告商们对此惶恐不已。大多数用户都不会去修改浏览器的默认设置，这是人的本性使然。现在很少有人会开启“请勿跟踪”选项，但如果“跟踪”是默认关闭的，该选项就会一直处于关闭状态。美国广告商协会的会长鲍勃-利奥狄斯称，如果广告界不能收集有关用户偏好的信息，那么用户的情况将更糟。他说人们看到的广告不会变少。“他们看到的广告会更没有意义，更没有针对性。” 广告商会对此作何反应仍不清楚。收到“请勿跟踪”信号无法迫使任何一家广告商停止跟踪用户的在线行为，尽管有些公司已经承诺会这么做。由于无法分辨用户是真的反对行为定向广告还是保留了微软的默认设置，一些公司可能忽略“请勿跟踪”信号，继续记录用户的在线行为。 同样不清楚的是为什么微软单独采取了这样的措施。毕竟微软也有广告业务。微软称其广告业务会遵循用户的“请勿跟踪”要求，不过实施方案仍在研究当中。如果微软想要打击几乎全靠广告业务赢利的谷歌，那么此举则不够直接：没人能保证将“请勿跟踪”作为默认设置会成为行业标准。“请勿跟踪”设置似乎并不是Windows 8的一大明显卖点——尽管微软之前将旗下某些其他产品与谷歌的同类产品进行了对比，认为自己的产品更胜一筹。微软的首席隐私官布伦丹-林奇在博客中写道：“我们认为用户应该有更多的控制权。”真的是这么简单吗?
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