Competition: Google beckons court with more advertising data

Google has secured two monopolies in the advertising business, namely for advertising servers and for advertising exchanges for adverts on websites, in a deliberately illegal manner. This was decided by a US federal district court in April. The linking of the Google AdX advertising exchange with the DFP (Doubleclick for Publishers) ad server was also illegal. The court is currently discussing what remedial measures need to be taken. A Google witness has now made a suggestion.

According to the witness, Google would be prepared to give website operators more insight into how Google's advertising exchange decides which adverts are shown and which are not. Google has always given the impression that this is decided by lightning-fast auctions; however, it is not as simple as the highest bid wins. The process is not transparent.

A senior programmer at Google Ad Manager testified before the US Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia on Monday and Tuesday. Giving website operators more insight is “I think a good idea,” he said, as Bloomberg Law reports. “We'll have to look into the details.” Ad Manager includes both the advertising exchange and Google's advertising servers.

However, the witness described the matter as incredibly complex. Full transparency could even harm website operators, and most people would not understand the source code anyway. The publication of technical documentation would be sufficient.

Plaintiffs want to break the chain of dominance

The proceedings were initiated in early 2023 by a competition lawsuit brought by the US government, then under Joe Biden, and eight US states. Google's market power harms both advertisers, who have to pay too much, and the operators of the websites and apps on which the adverts run, who receive too little money for them. In between, Google profits and takes an average of 35 percent in the form of several fees.

Google denied the allegations but was unable to convince the court of its view of the matter. The court only rejected claim III, which accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the market for advertiser ad networks. It ruled in favor of Google on the other three parts of the claim. The US government's lawyers are demanding that Google sell its advertising exchange and publish the auction logic. Without the advertising exchange, the data company would no longer control the entire online advertising chain.

The case is called USA et al. v. Google and is pending in the US Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia under case number 1:23-cv-00108.

• The Declaratory judgement of April 2025

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