Home AdExchanger Talks Antitrust Soul Searching

Antitrust Soul Searching

SHARE:
Adam Epstein, co-CEO & president, adMarketplace

US District Court Judge Amit Mehta may be sitting in his chambers at this very moment deliberating his decision in the Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust case against Google over its (alleged) dominance of the search market.

His ruling, expected this fall, is highly anticipated. If Judge Mehta sides with the government, Google will have to make major modifications to its search business. (The exact remedy would be decided during a subsequent hearing.)

That would “change the game and unleash innovation in search that you really haven’t seen in 20 years,” says Adam Epstein, co-CEO and president of search advertising company adMarketplace, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.

Speaking of change, when adMarketplace was founded in 2000, the search world looked dramatically different. Google was only two years old, the search engine space was full of competitors, and Google’s search algorithm was really innovative, Epstein says.

But Google went public in 2004 and slowly but surely thought more about the gods of Wall Street and search monetization than the quality of the search results themselves, he says.

“Google’s up against the law of big numbers, and they have a workforce and an executive team that’s comped mostly by the value of their share price,” Epstein says. “Of course, that’s a difficult thing to manage, [and] when you’ve got 90% market share, there’s really very few ways you can increase your stock price except for value extraction.”

Also in this episode: Is AI-generated search the future, why Google’s Performance Max has some search advertisers hopping mad and how answering a Craigslist ad changed Epstein’s life. Plus: Why testimony and depositions from the DOJ’s soon-to-be-decided search suit against Google could resurface in the government’s ad-tech-focused antitrust suit against Google. That trial begins on September 9.

For more articles featuring Adam Epstein, click here.

Must Read

Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)

Judge Mehta’s Remedies For Google’s Search Monopoly Won’t Cure What Ails Publishers

Remedies in the federal search antitrust case against Google landed with a thud earlier this week. Most publishers and ad industry pundits were sorely disappointed.

Conversion APIs Are Becoming Table Stakes – But Not All Brands Have Bought In

CAPI integrations have moved from a nice-to-have to a necessity for anyone operating within walled garden environments. Now they’re laying the groundwork for an outcomes-driven ad ecosystem.

Peppa Pig

The Media And Retail Deals Behind The Peppa Pig Franchise Expansion

Peppa Pig is everywhere. Whether or not you have children, you likely know the little girl pig from the kid’s cartoon show. But the Peppa media franchise is just getting started.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

How A For-Profit College Is Using CTV Ads To Win Over New Students

The American College of Education partnered with performance TV company MNTN to better reach its audience of adults seeking higher education.

Critics Say The Trade Desk Is Forcing Kokai Adoption, But Apparently It’s Up To Agencies

Is TTD forcing agencies to adopt the new Kokai interface despite claims they can still use the interface of their choice? Here’s what we were able to find out.

Why Big Brand Price Increases Will Flatten Ad Budgets

Product prices and marketing budgets are flip sides of the same coin. But the phase-in effects of tariffs, combined with vicissitudes of global weather and commodity production, challenge that truism.