Britain’s CMA finds Google is using anti-competitive practices in ad tech

Sept. 6 (UPI) — Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority Friday provisionally found that Google has abused its dominant market positions by using publisher and server buying tools to restrict competition in the technology advertising market.

The CMA said in a statement that it is concerned “that Google is using anti-competitive practices in open-display ad tech,” using its dominance to preference its own services.

“We’ve provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites,” Juliette Enser, CMA’s Interim Executive Director of Enforcement, said in a statement.

She added that it’s important for publishers and advertisers to “get a fair deal when buying or selling digital advertising space.”

The CMA said both the U.S. Justice Department and European Commission have also opened separate investigations into Google’s ad tech activities.

The DOJ filed suit in January 2023, alleging that “Google’s anti-competitive conduct has suppressed alternative technologies, hindering their adoption by publishers, advertisers, and rivals.”

A federal judge ruled Aug. 5 that Google violated U.S. antitrust law as a monopoly in search and text advertising. That ruling was in a lawsuit filed by the government in 2020.

The European Commission said Google could face mandatory divestment for after preliminarily finding Google is using its market dominance to favor its own advertising exchanges.

The CMA’s investigation in Britain was announced in May 2022, when it began probing advertising technology intermediation, known as the ad tech stack.

Whenever someone opens an app or website page, the CMA said, an almost instant series of auctions and transactions happen to determine what advertising will be shown to that user on that page or app.

Advertiser bids are transmitted through a chain of various intermediaries to match the space on the webpage with whatever advertiser is willing to pay the most for it.

The CMA’s investigation focus is on Google’s role in three critical parts of that intermediary chain. Google also operates an ad exchange called AdX.

“The CMA has provisionally found that, since at least 2015, Google has abused its dominant positions through the operation of both its buying tools and publisher ad server in order to strengthen AdX’s market position and to protect AdX from competition from other exchanges,” a statement from the CMA said.

Google has also prevented rivals — publishers and servers — from effectively competing with Google’s DFP publisher ad service, according to the CMA.

The CMA cited various Google practices that are anti-competitive under British market law.

They include providing AdX with exclusive preferential access to advertisers, manipulating advertiser bids so they have higher values when going through AdX, and allowing AdX to bid first in auctions run by DFP, effectively giving it a “right of first refusal” that can prevent rivals from getting chances to submit bids.

The CMA said it has found that Google’s anti-competitive practices are ongoing and is “therefore considering what may be required to ensure that Google ceases the anti-competitive practices and that Google does not engage in similar practices in the future.”