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.“最出色的哲学家霍默·辛普森(Homer Simpson)曾多次令人难忘地将酒精叙述为“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于，它资助了你在网上展开的各种活动，但又给你带给很多惹人厌的困难。

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.你在网络上享用的所有内容基本都是因为有广告收益才以求不存在，还包括这份你正在读者的报纸和它又主将又有魅力的科技专栏作者；正如我曾多次说道过的，如果没网络广告，世界上很多最简单的技术有可能显然会经常出现。但与此同时，广告及其赖以跟踪你的信息和分析你的市场需求的极大隐密的数据搜集系统，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，有更加多的网络用户通过加装广告截击软件来逃离网络广告每天的狂轰滥炸。这类非常简单的免费软件可以让你在网际网路时会遇到广告忽然冒出来推开在你想要读者或观赏的内容前面。

装有了截击软件，网页浏览器总体上不会运营得更慢，浪费在读取广告上的比特率不会较少，网际网路时也较少遇到让人恼怒的情况。你不会怪异，其他人为什么不也重新加入到这个没广告的世界来。

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.实质上，的确有可能所有人都学会了用这种东西。广告截击技术早已经常出现好几年，但现在它的用于人数于是以很快攀升，其速度之慢甚至让一些广告界人士指出实在不会对承托网络的经济结构带给灾难性影响。这种情况引起了有关广告截击准确与否的辩论。

一些出版商和广告商回应，广告截击违背了约束互联网的潜在誓约——为了提供免费内容，我们都必须承受大大经常出现的广告阻碍。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，广告截击对广告商和出版商有可能不存在一个潜在受到影响：最后它或许可以免职广告业仅次于的浪费。如果广告截击普及出去，将被迫广告商发售更加简练、袭扰性要强的广告，他们处置有关我们的信息的方式也不会比过去半透明得多，否则就要面临被总有一天屏蔽的危险性。

“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.”“似乎，广告业的生态系统早已遭了毁坏，”Eyeo公司发言人本·威廉姆斯(Ben Williams)说。这家德国公司研发了最风行的广告截击软件Adblock Plus。“广告业必须有一场确实的变革，使他们能建构一大批用户能拒绝接受的更加出众的广告。

”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.留下这个行业的时间有可能不多了。在上周公布的一份报告中，Adobe和跟踪广告截击情况的爱尔兰创业公司PageFair估算，广告截击软件今年大约不会让出版商损失将近220亿美元的收益。

该报告还认为，全世界有数2亿人常常截击广告，而且这一数字在较慢激增，去年就提高了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，广告屏蔽软件大多不能加装在电脑上。但苹果预计于秋季公布的近期移动操作系统iOS 9将能反对广告屏蔽功能。

有几家公司早已在研发限于于这一新版系统的应用于。等它公布以后，你只需iTunes一个广告截击软件，就可以在iPhone的Safari浏览器上屏蔽广告了，或许还限于于能关上网络链接的其他应用于。

“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.”“很有可能再次发生的情况是，现在用于广告截击软件的2亿人中，就当其中有一半用iPhone好了，他们全都会挥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。“然后，他们不会开始跟朋友谈到这个神秘的应用于，能给你的手机省电，节省你的数据量，还不会提升网速。它很可能会大面积流行起来。很多人将习惯于没广告的移动网际网路体验。

”It’s important to note that PageFair has skin in this game, and some have accused the company of self-interested alarmism.必须警告的是，PageFair有利益关系牵涉其中。有人谴责这家公司为超过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否在用于广告截击软件，然后跨过截击仍向这些人发送到广告。

布兰奇菲尔德回应，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”技术协助客户跨过截击。为了能让自己在广告公司中维持领先，他拒绝接受透漏这项技术的细节。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.向加装广告截击软件的用户展出广告，这听得一起也类似于放垃圾邮件。

但话说回来，它也可能会带给更佳的广告体验。据布兰奇菲尔德透漏，PageFair用于了一种聪明的策略，可以增加用户的气愤情绪，即只表明那些没“袭扰性”的广告。

也就是说，这些广告会有动画效果，会遮盖页面内容，也会读取不会监控页面活动并向乱七八糟的不得而知服务器汇报的“跟踪工具”。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.”兰奇菲尔德说道，通过拒绝公司只投出非常简单整洁的广告，PageFair可以给广告业带给完善的生态。

“这个行业丧失了用户的信任，而用户是对的，网络上的确有很多糟糕透顶的广告，”他说道。“我们有这样一次机会，可以转变这种状况。”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.)有许多公司企图建构一个可以产生更佳广告产品的生态系统，PageFair只是其中之一。

为解决自身产品给行业带给的不良影响，研发AdBlock Plus软件的Eyeo公司发动了一项取名为“能拒绝接受的广告”的倡议，成立了一个标准，那些超过标准的广告，可以被所有用户看见，即使他们加装了广告截击软件。同时，这类广告也是低保真的，无法是动画，也无法覆盖面积整个页面。

（Eyeo不会向表明这类广告的一些大公司缴纳费用，比如谷歌就给Eyeo收费以便它的搜寻广告能让AdBlock Plus用户看见。）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。这家公司研发的一种插件能让用户寻找并截击在线跟踪工具，也就是可以把有关用户网页习惯的数据发送给营销机构的网页代码。

该公司称之为，最近几年，因为用来分析消费者不道德的营销软件显得好用多了，这种跟踪工具的数量呈圆形爆发式快速增长。Ghostery报告称之为，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》网站的一个页面上找到了22、18、22和26个跟踪工具。

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.这些跟踪工具不仅体现出有，有人在企图概括你的特征，而且还不会浪费时间。当你看见某个网页仍然在读取时，一般来说都是这种跟踪工具导致的。Ghostery致力于解决问题这个问题。

该公司不会告诉他网站的经营者，是哪些跟踪工具减少了网页的读取速度，并为此缴纳一定费用。这种作法反过来可能会提高广告的投入效果。该公司迅速还将发售一种“Ghostery评分”，根据网站读取的跟踪工具，来告诉他用户哪些网站有一点信赖。

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.这种模式极具嘲讽意味：PageFair、AdBlock Plus和Ghostery都在一定程度上依赖消费者对截击广告的兴趣，同时又都在推展目的制作出有更佳的广告的创意行动。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。制订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)回应，他所在的的组织早已开始向iTunes涉及软件的用户做出对此。他说道，互联网广告局最近仍然在希望，针对映射跟踪工具的网页，制订更加明晰的指导方针。

“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.“因为看见了广告截击的再次发生频率，我们考虑到，‘好吧，是时候对以前没有应付过的领域做到一些容许了，”坎宁安说道。That suggests another practical utility of ad blocking — it appears to be an effective form of protest. For better ads tomorrow, block ads today.这表明出有了广告截击的另一个实用价值：它或许是一种有效地的抗议形式。

为了明天能有更佳的广告，就得截击今天的广告。

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