Internal Google documents released during the ongoing antitrust trial against the tech giant have shed light on the company’s efforts to maintain its dominance in the digital advertising industry through exclusivity deals and tying its ad-tech businesses together.
Marketing Brew reports that on day seven of the Google antitrust trial saw the release of a tranche of internal Google communications that the DOJ claims reinforce its argument that the company unfairly tied its ad-tech businesses together to maintain a monopoly on the industry. The documents revealed that Google employees were aware that the company’s publisher ad exchange, AdX, heavily relied on exclusive access to Google’s advertisers to maintain its dominance in the market.
In an internal memo weighing the benefits of opening up ad inventory to third parties, Google employees expressed concern that if AdX lost exclusivity to Google’s advertisers, “many publishers would terminate their AdX relationship in favor of their preferred vendors.” This revelation underscores the importance of advertiser exclusivity in Google’s strategy to maintain its market position. Internal emails previously revealed at the trial show that crushing competition was vitally important to Google executives.
Further evidence presented in court showed that Google’s own buy-side tools were seen as weaker because they were exclusive to the company’s own AdX. An internal company conversation revealed that Google employees suggested the company’s buy side was “subsidizing” the sell side, which “greatly weakens GDN’s position in the market.” GDN, or Google Display Network, refers to Google’s display ads business.
The extent of Google’s reliance on its exclusivity deals was highlighted in a 2014 internal simulation, which showed that the company’s revenue would fall by 70 percent if Google’s ad network didn’t bid on AdX inventory.
Publishers, in an attempt to circumvent Google’s dominance, turned to header bidding, an open-source technology that allows publishers to access multiple ad exchanges. The DOJ had earlier revealed that Google executive Chris LaSala considered header bidding an “existential threat” in a 2016 email. Google allegedly considered a proposal to “starve” publishers that adopted header bidding technology, although the proposal never went into effect. The company also contemplated building a firewall between its buy and sell-side businesses to “legitimize AdX as a platform,” but Nirmal Jayaram, a senior director of engineering at Google, testified that he wasn’t aware of any formal firewall being implemented.
As the trial continues, the DOJ aims to prove that Google’s exclusivity deals and the tying of its ad-tech businesses together constitute anticompetitive practices that have allowed the company to maintain its dominant position in the digital advertising industry. The internal documents presented in court provide a glimpse into Google’s strategies and the concerns raised by its own employees regarding the company’s market power.
Read more at Marketing Brew here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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