纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国初创企业涌向谷歌Meta投放巨额广告

The trade relationship between China and the United States has plenty of friction. But at least one area is booming: Chinese start-ups looking to establish a presence in the West are spending billions of dollars for advertisements on services owned by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies.

中美之间的贸易关系摩擦不断。但至少有一个领域正在蓬勃发展：寻求在西方立足的中国初创企业正花费数十亿美元，在硅谷一些最大的科技公司提供的服务上投放广告。

Temu, the international arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is flooding Google with ads for absurdly inexpensive goods. With an initial public offering looming, the fast-fashion merchant Shein is inundating Instagram with ads for clothes and accessories at rock-bottom prices. Developers of China’s video streaming and gaming apps are dumping marketing dollars into Facebook, X and YouTube to entice potential users.

Temu是中国电商巨头拼多多的国际分支，在谷歌上投放了大量极其廉价的商品的广告。随着首次公开募股的临近，快时尚商家希音(Shein)在Instagram上大量发布低价服装和配饰的广告。中国的视频流媒体和游戏应用开发商正在向Facebook、X和YouTube投入大量营销资金，以吸引潜在用户。

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on call with analysts that Chinese-based advertisers accounted for 10 percent of its revenue, almost double over two years ago. In the last year, Temu has placed about 1.4 million ads globally across Google services, and at least 26,000 different versions of ads on Meta, according to Meta’s Ad Library.

Facebook和Instagram的母公司Meta在与分析师的电话会议上表示，来自中国的广告客户占其收入的10%，几乎是两年前的两倍。根据Meta的广告库，去年，Temu在全球范围内通过谷歌服务投放了大约140万个广告，在Meta上投放了至少2.6万个不同版本的广告。

“What companies like Temu have done is really just open a fire hose of money that it is pouring into ads,” said Sky Canaves, senior analyst for retail at eMarketer. “You can’t escape their ads across Facebook, Instagram and Google Search.”

“Temu这样的公司所做的实际上就是拧开了资金投入的水龙头，源源不断流向广告，”eMarketer的高级零售分析师斯基·卡纳维斯表示。“你逃不开他们在Facebook、Instagram和谷歌搜索上的广告。”

The surge in spending shows how interconnected China and the United States remain, despite vigorous efforts by each country to be more self-reliant. The Chinese companies are gaining access to vast audiences of consumers, and the Silicon Valley companies are making money off a market they are otherwise not doing business in.

广告开支的激增表明，尽管中美都在努力更加自立，但两国之间的联系仍然紧密。中国公司正在接触到庞大的消费者群体，而硅谷公司正在从一个他们本来不会涉足的市场赚钱。

The marketing blitz is fueled by the global ambitions of Chinese start-ups. At home, the economy is no longer growing by leaps and bounds as it had for years, and companies are subject to a thicket of government rules that have quashed their growth.

中国初创企业的全球雄心助推了这场营销风暴。在国内，经济不再像过去几年那样突飞猛进地增长，企业受制于政府的繁复规定，令增长受到抑制。

The crackdown on firms like the e-commerce giant Alibaba and the once high-flying ride share provider Didi underscored the message that a company, no matter how successful, can be brought to its knees if it runs afoul of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping.

对电子商务巨头阿里巴巴和红火一时的拼车服务提供商滴滴打车等公司的打击凸显了一个信息——无论一家公司有多么成功，如果它与中国共产党及其领导人习近平发生冲突，都可能被打倒。

“There’s a limit on the degree that a company can grow in China,” said Andrew Collier, founder of Orient Capital, an economic research firm in Hong Kong. “Xi Jinping is perfectly happy for Chinese companies to make money overseas as long as they toe the line within China.”

“一家公司在中国的发展程度是有限的，”香港经济研究公司东方融资的创始人安德鲁·科利尔说。

But going global comes at a cost. It’s hard to garner significant amounts of digital attention without paying Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Meta. Together, the two companies sell a majority of all internet advertising largely through their online properties like Google Search, YouTube, the Google Play App Store, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

但走向全球是有代价的。如果不付钱给谷歌的母公司Alphabet和Meta，就很难获得大量的数字关注。这两家公司主要通过谷歌搜索、YouTube、Google Play应用商店、Facebook、Instagram、WhatsApp和Messenger等在线资产销售大部分互联网广告。

For the most part, Alphabet’s and Meta’s products are not available in China. Efforts to offer their services in China meant abiding by Chinese government censors, which caused employee protests at both companies.

在很大程度上，Alphabet和Meta的产品在中国是无法获得的。在中国提供服务，意味着要遵守中国政府的审查制度，这引起了两家公司员工的抗议。

Alphabet and Meta have such significant reach in the rest of the world that Chinese firms are now going to them.

Alphabet和Meta在世界其他地区的影响力非常大，以至于中国公司现在开始向它们求助。

The rush of spending by Temu and Shein has “single-handedly” driven up the cost of digital advertising, Josh Silverman, chief executive of Etsy, said on a call with analysts in November.

Etsy首席执行官乔希·西尔弗曼去年11月在与分析师的电话会议上表示，Temu和希音的大举支出“一手”推高了数字广告的成本。

Discount Chinese e-commerce companies have grabbed increasing attention in the United States over the past few years, tempting buyers with low-cost goods when inflation was driving up prices.

过去几年，中国廉价电子商务公司在美国吸引了越来越多的关注，在通货膨胀推高价格的情况下，它们以低成本的商品吸引买家。

Temu opened its U.S. site in September 2022. It sold things like a garlic press for $2 or a cotton swab dispenser for $1.50. Temu is now available in 50 countries.

Temu于2022年9月在美国开设了工厂。它出售的产品包括2美元的压蒜器和1.5美元的棉签盒。Temu目前在50个国家销售商品。

With the slogan “Shop Like a Billionaire,” Temu has been a voracious buyer of all forms of advertising, from low-cost Facebook ads to pricey spots during the Super Bowl. Temu has the deep pockets of PDD Holdings, which operates Pinduoduo.

Temu以“像亿万富翁一样购物”为口号，一直大量购买各种形式的广告，从低成本的Facebook广告到超级碗期间的昂贵广告位。Temu拥有运营拼多多的PDD控股公司的雄厚资金。

Bernstein Research estimates that Temu spent $3 billion on marketing last year. In a lawsuit filed against Shein in December, Temu said it served about 30 million daily users in the United States. Temu’s app is the most downloaded on both Apple’s and Google’s app stores, according to Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.

伯恩斯坦研究公司估计，Temu去年在营销方面花费了30亿美元。在去年12月对希音提起的诉讼中，Temu表示，它在美国每天为大约3000万用户提供服务。根据应用分析公司Sensor Tower的数据，Temu的应用下载量在苹果和谷歌的应用商店中都是最高的。

Shein, which entered the U.S. market about seven years ago, is also continuing to spend aggressively on marketing. It does not sell products in China, although it was founded in Nanjing and relies heavily on Chinese sellers and the country’s supply chain.

大约七年前进入美国市场的希音也在继续大举投资于营销。尽管在南京成立，且严重依赖中国卖家和供应链，但它不在中国销售产品。

It has run about 80,000 ads across Google in the past year alone, including product advertisements that appear next to search results. On Meta, Shein has more than 7,000 advertisements active, according to Meta’s Ad Library.

仅去年一年，它就在谷歌上投放了大约8万个广告，包括出现在搜索结果旁边的产品广告。根据Meta的广告库，在Meta上，希音有超过7000个活跃广告。

For Temu and Shein, spending heavily on Facebook will not guarantee success. Nearly a decade ago, Wish, another buzzy e-commerce app focused on low-cost goods sourced from China, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Facebook ads. But the retail app failed to sustain the interest of shoppers. Last month, Wish was sold to Singapore’s Qoo10, another e-commerce platform, for $173 million, one-hundredth of its public offering valuation in 2020.

对于Temu和希音来说，在Facebook上投入巨资并不能保证成功。近十年前，另一个从中国采购低价商品的热门电子商务应用Wish在Facebook上投放了数亿美元的广告。但这款零售应用未能令购物者维持兴趣。上个月，Wish以1.73亿美元的价格出售给了另一家电子商务平台、新加坡Qoo10，这是其2020年公开募股估值的百分之一。

Shein and Temu allow third-party sellers to upload product images directly to Meta’s advertising systems, and feature those products inside their ads on Instagram and Facebook. Those ads, which are targeted to users’ interests based on Meta’s vast troves of data, are generally more effective at luring shoppers.

希音和Temu允许第三方卖家直接将产品图片上传到Meta的广告系统，并在Instagram和Facebook上的广告中展示这些产品。这些广告根据Meta的海量数据定位用户的兴趣，通常更能有效地吸引购物者。

The ad spending is not limited to retailers. In recent months, Instagram has become inundated with previews of short addictive dramas — soap operas for users with limited attention spans. Each episode is usually a minute long, with the series running about 80 to 100 episodes.

广告支出不仅限于零售商。近几个月来，Instagram上充斥着令人上瘾的短剧预告，它们是为注意力有限的用户准备的肥皂剧。每集通常是一分钟，整个系列大约有80到100集。

The shows tend to be overly dramatic, with grabby titles like “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” or “30 Days Till I Marry My Husband’s Nemesis.”

这些短剧往往过于狗血，有一些抢眼的标题，比如《亿万富翁丈夫的双重生活》或《30天后嫁给丈夫的宿敌》。

These short dramas are popular in China, and a handful of companies — apps like Reelshort, DramaBox and FlexTV — are competing to export this form of entertainment. Instead of selling monthly subscriptions like, say, Netflix, the short-content apps use a model similar to online games, requiring users to purchase what are known as coins that can be used to pay for episodes. A viewer can also earn coins by watching commercials.

这些短剧在中国很受欢迎，一些公司——像Reelshort、DramaBox和FlexTV这样的应用程序——正在竞争出口这种娱乐形式。短片内容应用不像Netflix那样按月销售订阅，而是采用类似于在线游戏的模式，要求用户购买所谓的“币”，用于支付剧集费用。观众也可以通过观看广告赚取硬币。

Similar to games, these apps require a steady stream of users to get hooked on samples of the programs and feel compelled to keep spending to see how the show ends. On Meta, DramaBox is running more than 1,000 active ads, according to Meta’s Ad Library, while Reelshort and Flex TV are running hundreds of ads.

与游戏类似，这些应用程序需要稳定的用户流去迷上短剧样片，被刺激着继续花钱，看到节目的结局。根据Meta的广告库，在Meta上，DramaBox投放了超过1000个活跃广告，Reelshort和Flex TV投放了数百个广告。

Another major Chinese advertiser on Meta is a Hong Kong-based game developer called First.Fun. The developer seems to be blanketing Facebook, Instagram and even X with ads to promote its flagship game, Last War: Survival, with hundreds of paid previews.

Meta上的另一个主要中国广告商是总部位于香港的游戏开发商First.Fun。该开发商似乎在Facebook、Instagram甚至X上投放了大量广告，推广其旗舰游戏《最后的战争：生存》(Last War: Survival)，还有数百次付费预览。

The previews have enticed players to download the app. It is the fifth-most-downloaded app on Google Play and 12th on Apple’s App Store.

这款游戏在Google Play上的下载量排名第五，在苹果应用商店排名第12。

Sensor Tower estimated that the game generated $22 million in revenue last month.

Sensor Tower估计，这款游戏上个月创造了2200万美元的收益。

Marketing on platforms like Meta has given the game developers a lifeline to customers outside the country as the Chinese government has made it harder to do business. The most recent example was in December when Chinese regulators announced plans to limit how much money people could spend on online video games. The agency drafting the plans backed off its initial proposals in the face of protests, but Beijing has been adopting an increasingly tougher stance against the game industry.

由于中国政府对商业活动的阻碍，Meta等平台的营销为游戏开发商提供了一条通往海外客户的生命线。最近的一个例子是去年12月，中国监管机构宣布计划，限制人们在网络视频游戏上的消费额度。面对抗议，起草计划的机构放弃了最初的提议，但北京对游戏行业采取了越来越强硬的立场。

The message has not been lost on game developers. On its website, Beijing Yuanqu Entertainment, First.Fun’s parent company, said it was focused purely on overseas markets, because it “firmly believes that China’s internet industry will continue to internationalize.”

游戏开发者并没有忽视这一信息。在其网站上，First.Fun的母公司北京元趣在其网站上表示，它完全专注于海外市场，因为它“坚定相信中国互联网产业会延续中国制造业的国际化进程”。