日本廣告巨擘電通卷入造假丑聞

　　When Toyota launched a quirky Twitter campaign depicting the car parts of its new Prius hybrid using anime girls earlier this year, the digital advertising impact was instant. 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. As with almost all of Toyota’s ads, the campaign’s creator was Dentsu.

　　豐田(Toyota)今年早些時候在Twitter上發(fā)布一個古怪的廣告——用動漫少女描繪其新款普銳斯(Prius)混合動力車的部件，該數字廣告的影響立竿見影。這種怪異和大膽吸引了日本年輕的社交媒體用戶，而他們正是豐田傳統(tǒng)上依賴名人效應的電視廣告從未有效觸及過的群體。和豐田幾乎所有廣告一樣，這則廣告的設計公司是電通(Dentsu)。

　　The Prius tweets were not part of the overcharging scandal that shook Japan’s most powerful advertising agency last week. But it was not coincidental that Toyota was the company that discovered the irregularities.

　　普銳斯在Twitter上的廣告與最近撼動這家日本最強大的廣告公司的收費過高丑聞無關。但是豐田發(fā)現電通的違規(guī)行為并非巧合。

　　The revelation followed a meticulous analysis of digital ad impact by a company grappling to connect with a home market that has shown declining interest in owning cars. The analysis was disappointing, prompting the automaker to question if whether Dentsu was placing the digital ads properly.

　　正在艱難試圖與表現出購車意愿下滑的本土市場溝通的豐田，對數字廣告的影響進行了細致分析，結果發(fā)現上述問題。分析結果令人失望，使得這家汽車制造商質疑電通是否妥善投放了數字廣告。

　　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. 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.

　　自從豐田于7月提交首份投訴以來，電通確認了633例疑似收費過高的情況，涉及金額至少230萬美元，影響111家客戶。其中有14例的廣告根本沒有投放，其他情況涉及不正確的投放時間和廣告效果報告作假。

　　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. These ads were supposed to offer advertisers greater transparency and make it easier to measure effectiveness. In practice, companies have struggled to judge whether these ads on websites and mobile devices have the desired impact.

　　此次丑聞涉及基于效果的廣告——這是一種較為流行的廣告類型，可以讓廣告商針對特定類型消費者，并根據商業(yè)效果支付費用。這些廣告本應該為廣告商提供更高的透明度，并且更容易衡量廣告效果。但在實踐中，公司很難判斷這些在網站和移動設備上投放的廣告是否產生了預期效果。

　　The story is not uniquely Japanese. The Dentsu discovery came days after Facebook admitted a mistake in measuring the time users spent viewing video ads on its social network.

　　這種情況不只出現在日本。在電通事件曝出前數日，Facebook承認在測算用戶在其社交網站上觀看視頻廣告的時間上存在錯誤。

　　The US ad industry is addressing concerns that ad agencies had been accepting cash rebates from media companies without informing their clients. There are also cases of online advertising slots that are never seen by consumers due to fraud.

　　美國廣告業(yè)正在應對廣告公司在不通知客戶的情況下收取媒體公司現金回扣的問題。同時還存在在線廣告根本沒有被消費者看到的欺詐行為。

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

　　但是在日本，人們對于廣告業(yè)不透明的擔憂因廣告公司、電視廣播公司和其他媒體公司之間的緊密聯系而加劇，這種格局使得價格談判更加不透明。

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

　　日本廣告市場的規(guī)模達到每年610億美元，而電通控制著其中的四分之一。同時，它主導著奧運會等利潤豐厚的贊助時段，這使得對其不滿的客戶很難公開表示擔憂。

　　That puts the onus on companies to toughen their scrutiny of agency management of digital ads, says Yumi Tanaka, JPMorgan analyst. Dentsu has promised that a more independent division inside the company will monitor the performance data of digital ads in question. 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.

　　摩根大通(JPMorgan)的分析師田中由美(Yumi Tanaka)稱，該問題促使企業(yè)加強審查代理商對數字廣告的管理。電通承諾，公司內部一個比較獨立的部門將監(jiān)測受到質疑的數字廣告的效果數據。但這仍然缺乏第三方核實，可能會促使客戶施壓電通公開更多實時數據而不是簡單的總結性數據。

　　It remains unclear whether the discrepancies in online ads were restricted to Dentsu or whether they plague the broader Japanese market. Shinsuke Iwasa, Mizuho analyst, warns that rivals should not treat it as a “Dentsu only” problem, citing the complexity of the performance-based ads. Dentsu has blamed lack of personnel and pressure to meet client demand for this new online advertising. Performance ads posted 22 per cent year-on-year growth in 2015 versus a 0.3 increase for Japan’s total ad spending.

　　尚不清楚在線廣告的問題僅限于電通還是影響了整個日本市場。瑞穗(Mizuho)分析師巖佐新助(Shinsuke Iwasa)警告稱，競爭對手不應該把它當做“唯獨電通”存在的問題，并指出了效果廣告的復雜性。電通將問題歸咎于缺乏人力，同時受到滿足客戶對這種新型在線廣告需求的壓力。2015年，效果廣告支出同比增長了22%，而日本整體廣告支出僅增長了0.3%。

　　For now, the amount of overcharging is unlikely to have any significant impact on Dentsu’s earnings. Its chief financial officer has stressed that none of its clients have cut ties with the company, saying such outright rejections “don’t normally happen in Japan”.

　　目前，收費過高的問題不太可能會對電通的盈利產生顯著影響。電通首席財務官強調沒有任何一家客戶切斷了與電通的聯系，稱諸如此類的絕交“在日本并不常見”。

　　Regardless of financial fallout, analysts and companies hope that Dentsu will pursue international standards of transparency with the rigour it has shown in its ambitions to expand globally. In addition to the £3.2bn acquisition of the UK’s Aegis in 2013, the agency has bought six companies in US, France, India, Australia and Brazil for undisclosed prices in September alone.

　　不管在財務上會帶來多大影響，分析師和其他公司希望電通可以嚴格追求國際上對透明度的標準，正如它在全球擴張的野心中展現的嚴謹態(tài)度一樣。除了2013年以32億英鎊收購英國安吉斯(Aegis)外，電通還在今年9月以未公開價格收購了分別位于美國、法國、印度、澳大利亞和巴西的6家公司。

　　The reputational damage from the revelations should not be underestimated. As a Dentsu client said: “It’s not the sums involved, but a question of credibility.”

　　此次事件對電通的聲譽造成的損害不應該被低估。正如電通一家客戶所言：“這與涉及金額無關，而是信譽問題。”