2023年经济学人 TikTok如何打破社交媒体(下)

（单词翻译）

TikTok如何打破社交媒体(下)

Meta points out that it has been here before.

Meta指出，这种情况它之前就经历过。

Instagram's Stories feature took a while to get advertisers signed up but is now a big earner.

Instagram的Stories功能花了一段时间才让广告商注册，但现在能带来大笔收入。

Meta is monetising Reels more aggressively and expects it to stop losing money around the end of this year.

Meta正在更积极地将Reels变现，预计将在今年年底左右停止亏损。

But the firm acknowledges that it will be a long time before Reels is as profitable as the old news feed.

但该公司承认，Reels还需要很长一段时间才能像老式新闻推送一样盈利。

"We know it took us several years to bring the gap close between Stories and Feed ads," Susan Li, Meta's chief financial officer, said on an earnings¹ call last month.

"我们知道，我们花了几年时间才缩小了Stories和Feed广告之间的差距。"Meta首席财务官苏珊·李上月在财报电话会议上表示，

"And we expect that this will take longer for Reels."

"而且我们预计，对于Reels来说，将需要更长的时间。"

Some wonder if the gap will in fact ever be closed.

有些人在想差距是否真的会被弥合。

Even mature video-apps cannot keep up with the old social networks when it comes to monetising their users' time.

在将用户的时间变现方面，即使是成熟的视频应用程序也不及老式社交网络。

YouTube, which has been around for 18 years, makes less than half as much money per user-hour as Facebook or Instagram, estimates Bernstein.

伯恩斯坦估计，已有18年历史的YouTube从用户身上每小时赚取的钱还不及Facebook或Instagram的一半。

In China, where short-form video took off a few years before it did in the West, short-video ads last year monetised at only about 15% the rate of ads on local e-commerce apps.

短视频在中国比在西方早几年开始流行，去年中国的短视频广告的变现率仅为本土电商应用广告的15%左右。

For one thing, the ad load in video is inescapably lower than on a news feed of text and images.

首先，视频的广告量不可避免地低于图文新闻推送的广告量。

Watch a five-minute YouTube clip and you might see three ads; scroll² Instagram for five minutes and you could see dozens.

看一段五分钟的YouTube视频，你可能会看到三个广告；刷五分钟的Instagram，你可能会看到几十个广告。

Watching video also seems to put consumers in a more passive mood than scrolling³ a feed of friends' updates, making them less likely to click through to buy.

观看视频似乎也会让消费者处于一种比刷好友动态时更被动的情绪，这会降低他们点击购买的可能性。

Booking 1,000 impressions for a video ad on Instagram Reels costs about half as much as 1,000 impressions for an ad on Instagram's news feed, reports Tinuiti, a big marketing⁴ agency, implying that advertisers see Reels ads as less likely to generate clicks.

大型营销机构Tinuiti报告称，在Instagram Reels上预订1000次视频广告显示量的费用，大约是Instagram新闻推送中1000次广告显示量费用的一半，这说明广告商认为Reels广告产生点击的可能性更小。

Auctions⁵ for video ads are less competitive than those for static ones, because many advertisers have yet to create ads in video format⁶.

与静态广告相比，视频广告的拍卖竞争较小，因为许多广告商还没有以视频格式制作广告。

Big advertisers prize video ads (and report record engagement on TikTok, where products have gone viral with the hashtag #TikTokmademebuyit).

大型广告商重视视频广告(并在TikTok上有创纪录的参与度，产品带着"TikTok让我买了它"的标签而疯传)。

But the long tail of small businesses from which social networks have made their billions find video spots tricky⁷ to produce.

但尾部的众多小企业发现视频广告很难制作，社交网络正是从这些小企业身上赚了数十亿美元。

Just over 40% of Meta's 10m or so advertisers use Reels ads, the company says.

Meta表示，在其1000万左右的广告商中，只有超过40%的广告商使用了Reels广告。

Getting the remaining 60% to create video commercials may be made easier by artificial intelligence.

让剩下60%的广告商制作视频广告可能会因为人工智能而变得容易一些。

One senior executive imagines a near future in which a small retailer⁸ can create a bespoke⁹ video ad using only voice commands.

一位高管设想，在不久的将来，小型零售商只需使用语音指令就可以生成定制的视频广告。

Until that moment arrives, half the long tail is lopped off.

但在那一刻到来之前，尾部一长串企业中的一半会被砍掉。

Short-video apps are also hampered¹⁰ by weaker targeting.

短视频应用程序也受到目标定向较弱的阻碍。

For audiences, part of the appeal of TikTok and its many imitators is that users need do no more than watch, and swipe when they get bored.

对于观众而言，TikTok和其许多模仿者的部分吸引力在于，用户只需要看视频，然后感到无聊的时候刷一下就行了。

The algorithm uses this to learn what kinds of videos--and therefore ads--they like.

算法利用这一点来了解用户喜欢什么类型的视频以及什么类型的广告。

But this guesswork is no substitute for the hard personal data harvested by the previous generation of social networks, which persuaded users to fill in a lengthy¹¹ profile including everything from their education to their marital¹² status.

但这种猜测并不能取代上一代社交网络收集的实打实的个人数据，社交网络说服用户填写一份冗长的个人资料，从教育背景到婚姻状况都包含在内。

The upshot is that many advertisers still treat short-form video as a place for loosely targeted so-called brand advertising¹³,

结果是许多广告商仍将短视频视为一种不太有针对性的所谓品牌广告，

to raise general awareness¹⁴ of their product, rather than the hyper-personalised (and more valuable) direct-response ads that old-school social networks specialise in.

用于提高人们对其产品的普遍认知度，而不是老式社交网络所擅长的那种高度个性化的(且更有价值)直效广告。

Here, at least, TikTok's imitators have an advantage over TikTok itself.

至少在这一点上，TikTok的模仿者比TikTok本身更有优势。

Using a trove¹⁵ of data built up over a decade and a half, when there were few rules against tracking users' activity across the wider web, Meta already knows a lot about many of the users watching its videos and can make well-informed guesses about the rest.

Meta利用15年来积累的大量宝贵数据(当时几乎没有禁止追踪用户在网络上的活动的规则)，已经对观看其视频的许多用户有了很深的了解，并可以对其余用户做出明智的猜测。

If a new, unknown user watches the same videos as a group who are known to be rich female graduates with children, say, it is a good bet that the new user has the same profile.

比如，如果一个新的未知用户和一群大学毕业的富有已育女性观看了相同的视频，那么很有可能这个新用户也有同样的个人资料。

TikTok says it has made big investments in its direct-response ads, including new tools for measuring their effectiveness.

TikTok表示，它已经在直效广告上投入了大量资金，包括衡量其有效性的新工具。

But it still has catching¹⁶ up to do.

但它仍需赶上差距。

"Meta are leveraging¹⁷ their history," says Mark Shmulik of Bernstein.

"Meta正在充分利用其历史。"伯恩斯坦的马克·施穆里克表示。

Social apps will not be the only losers in this new, trickier¹⁸ ad environment.

在这一更棘手的广告新环境中，社交应用程序不会是唯一的输家。

"All advertising is about what the next-best alternative is," says Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall, an advertising consultancy.

"所有广告都是关于第二好的替代选择是什么。" 广告咨询公司"麦迪逊华尔"的布莱恩·维泽表示。

Most advertisers allocate¹⁹ a budget to spend on ads on a particular platform, he says, and "the budget is the budget", regardless of how far it goes.

他表示，大多数广告商都会为某一特定平台的广告支出分配预算，无论效果如何，"预算就是预算"。

If social-media advertising becomes less effective across the board, it will be bad news not just for the platforms that sell those ads, but for the advertisers that buy them.

如果社交媒体的广告整体都变得不那么有效，那么这不仅对出售广告位的平台是个坏消息，对购买这些广告位的广告商也是一个坏消息。