Google’s Game Plan
Later this morning, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema will resume the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial. Google was convicted of its monopoly charge in April, so now the trial is entering its remedies stage.
Both sides submitted their own remedy proposals this month, which, unsurprisingly, are deeply at odds.
The DOJ is pushing for a divestiture of parts of Google Ad Manager (GAM), targeting its publisher ad tech.
However, Google’s acquisitions of sell-side vendors DoubleClick, Admeld and Invite Media, now all part of GAM, weren’t specified in Brinkema’s decision in April, notes Google VP of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland in a blog post on Friday.
“DOJ’s proposed changes go far beyond the Court’s liability decision and the law” in requiring a divestiture of those businesses, Mulholland writes. On top of the divestiture of the one-time AdX business, the DOJ suggests major changes that go beyond the open web display ad server and ad exchange markets, which were specifically cited in the decision.
Another of Google’s arguments will be that the business decisions targeted by the DOJ are from, like, six to 16 years ago.
“Getting the remedies right in this new environment will be key to addressing concerns without breaking what’s working,” according to Mulholland.
AdExchanger will be at the courthouse and following up later this evening (no computers, phones or devices allowed at the court). Stay tuned.
Down The Tubes
YouTube is going headfirst into AI. But is that the right approach for a platform so heavily reliant on human creators?
Wired editor at large Steven Levy recently discussed this topic with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, who’s bounced around Google leadership roles since he joined the company via … DoubleClick, of course! Which was the foundation for the tech behind the aforementioned monopoly trial.
Mohan, for his part, maintains that regardless of whether individuals use generative AI tools, “authentic” and “human content” will always rise to the top. Similarly, YouTube’s recently updated partner policy distinguishes between AI content and spam, although many users (and creators) are concerned about the obvious overlap.
But AI tools are hardly infallible.
For example, a recent internal YouTube algorithm change caused a noticeable drop in viewership numbers across the platform, PPC Land reports. Most affected creators point to August 13 as the day the change happened – exactly when YouTube rolled out its new AI tool to guess users’ ages and automatically place minors in “restricted mode.”
The AI trend could bode ill for creators who rely on YouTube. But it’s also a problem for advertisers who, in turn, rely on those creators – and who are much less interested in buying ads against the generative AI content.
The Trick Desk
Kokai’s updates are all the rage – at least among traders employed by The Trade Desk.
The DSP recently revamped its interface in response to complaints about the new ad-buying platform – the shift from Solimar to Kokai, for those versed in TTD product terminology. (Gorgon, anyone? Megagon? Galileo?)
To help elucidate (and pitch) the new Kokai features, TTD sent out a deck featuring testimonials raving about the platform’s newfound ease.
The catch? Every testimonial was from a TTD employee.
“Because we’ve had it in internal testing mode for a few weeks, it gives us an opportunity to spotlight some of our internal experts and show their feedback,” a TTD spokesperson tells Adweek.
“The lack of actual client feedback in this presentation is concerning,” a former TTD employee tells Adweek, positing that the reason for the ploy was because the company “couldn’t get positive feedback from clients or haven’t bothered to collect and listen to client feedback at all for this update.”
In soccer parlance, it is an own goal, since The Trade Desk could certainly have secured an innocuous, positive line from a handful of clients.
But Wait! There’s More!
Even with a new US TikTok deal in sight, advertisers are uneasy about the platform splitting into a US and non-US version. [Digiday]
Google and PayPal sign an agentic commerce and AI licensing partnership. [TechCrunch]
The Children’s Advertising Review Unit accuses YouTuber MrBeast of improperly collecting children’s data and failing to disclose ads. [Adweek]
The right to anonymity is powerful, and age verification laws are jeopardizing it. [The Verge]
An independent adult entertainment company is suing Meta for torrenting its content for AI training. [Wired]
Paramount Global ex-chair Shari Redstone insists that settling with Trump was “the right thing to do” and defends the Colbert cancellation. [Variety]
