Google ad tech antitrust trial

Reorienting the ad auction so that ad servers bid into Prebid lets publishers access demand from Google AdX without also having to use Google’s ad server.

Google and the Department of Justice filed the next round of paperwork that will determine what Google’s punishment will look like in the ad tech antitrust case.

Given how much the market has changed since the Google trial began, and the wiggle room in the ruling itself, publishers aren’t expecting much relief from the court’s behavioral remedies.

The court has unsealed Judge Leonie Brinkema’s full remedies opinion in US v. Google (ad tech edition). So, what’s in there?

After Judge Brinkema declined to order a Google breakup, ad tech leaders weigh in on how the FTC should approach its case against Amazon.

McGrath left Prebid in June following five years as board chairman after stepping down as SVP of product management at Magnite. But now, overseeing Prebid will be his full-time job.

With AI eating everyone’s traffic, publishers could use a sympathetic ear. AdTech Therapy’s Jana Meron and Scott Messer talk through the sell side’s biggest challenges and break down what Google avoiding an ad tech breakup means for media owners.

Agentic AI shows promise for direct deals. But if Google has its way, Buyer Direct could put an end to all sorts of agentic direct sales opportunities while they’re still in the cradle.

People Inc. previewed plans to downsize by focusing mainly on its key properties. The strategy makes sense considering its publishing portfolio has lost about two-thirds of its Google traffic.

AdMarketplace’s new chief product officer, Sam Cox, wants to rethink how ads fit into AI chat and search – without losing user trust.

People Inc. is offsetting a 50% decline in Google search traffic through off-platform growth and its highest digital revenue gains in five quarters.

From headline to punchline, AdExchanger’s weekly comics distill ad tech industry news into something our readers can laugh about. These are our faves of the year.

The fate of the open web will be decided on who controls the data that drives monetization and the AI that determines distribution. Google controls both, and proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly do not address this imbalance.

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

In the Google search case, a forced spin-off of Chrome was never gonna happen, but a court-ordered divestiture of GAM isn’t beyond the pale in the ad tech case, says Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics.

GAM’s dinner with ad agencies sparked speculation that Google is preparing to spin off its bundled SSP and ad server as a remedy to its ad tech monopoly. But Google says it’s just part of the trend of SSPs going direct to buyers.

Google’s SSP tries to cut out its DSP ahead of a possible ad tech breakup; Perplexity’s head of ads skips town; and Amazon’s search ad pause flooded the market with big spenders.

Last week, the DOJ and Google filed their respective witness lists and the exhibit lists for the remedy phase of the ad tech antitrust trial. Lots of familiar faces!

Data brokers de-index their opt-outs; Meta is still the go-to for influencer ads; and Perplexity offers to buy Chrome.

The SSP is betting on the DOJ’s antitrust remedies, plus closer relationships with agencies, DSPs and mid-sized advertisers, to help it eat some of Google’s lunch.

Programmatic promised clarity: automation, efficiency and measurable outcomes. What we got instead is complexity dressed up as optimization: a stack of acronyms performing trust theater.

Former Goodway Group CEO Jay Friedman shares hot takes on everything from curation (“absurd”) to brand safety (“botched”).

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

When platforms choose to label any significant portion of an ad buy as “other,” it’s a deliberate decision to withhold information for the seller’s benefit and the buyer’s detriment.

If the court ultimately orders Google to spin off AdX or DFP, the result would be a fundamental rebalancing of power across the digital advertising supply chain. For marketers, the implications are just as significant.

More competition between SSPs and ad servers should be a boon for publishers in the long term. But publishers will feel some growing pains if there is a sudden disruption in Google’s ad payouts or if their ad server fees increase.

The wave of ad tech headlines in recent weeks represents a long overdue moment of reckoning for companies who (still) hold disproportionate control over publishers’ website traffic and revenue potential.

Longtime Google exec Stephen Yap on why he left after more than 17 years to become CRO of Perion Network: “There’s a better future out there, one that’s a lot more efficient.”

Tune into the first episode of the year with guest Andrew Frank, VP and distinguished analyst at research firm Gartner. We cover a lot of ground, from the impact of multiple major Big Tech antitrust trials to practical AI use cases (minus the BS).

Every week, we publish an original comic creation inspired by trends in the online advertising industry. These are the stories – and the highly specific double entendres – behind AdExchanger’s top 10 comics of 2024.