Antitrust

Law firms are targeting marketers for class action suits; Discord is trying to go mainstream; and ICE’s media presence is getting unavoidable.

Where the DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial stands after one week’s worth of remedies arguments.

Day Two of the remedies phase of the Google ad tech antitrust trial was a grueling back-and-forth about the future of Google Ad Manager.

Court is back in session. And the fate of  the open internet is in the balance.

On Monday, PubMatic became the second sell-side platform to file a follow-on antitrust lawsuit against Google.

Late Friday evening, Google filed its proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly to District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema, and unsurprisingly, they’re rather mild – and very different from what the Department of Justice is looking for.

Google is running a search monopoly, but the remedies are light. How will this decision affect advertisers and competitors? Plus, Google Ad Manager is acting like a standalone SSP, a move that appears connected to the looming remedies phase of Google’s second antitrust case.

“I tried to write it so it’s not exclusively for ad tech nerds,” Ari Paparo told AdExchanger of his new book, about Google’s advertising dominance. “And I mean that affectionately.”

AdExchanger spoke to a number of programmatic leaders who testified in the DOJ’s Google antitrust trial last September.

The Google antitrust ruling will have wide-reaching implications for the tech industry at large, not just the ad businesses therein. But in the meantime, it’s only natural to see programmatic veterans letting off a bit of steam.