Investment banker Paul Crisci evaluated whether AdX and DFP would be attractive assets for potential buyers if Google is forced to sell them. Crisci testified that at least in an initial assessment, plenty of companies in ad tech and adjacent markets would likely be interested in buying them.
During testimony from the DOJ’s expert economic witness Robin Lee, Judge Brinkema asked how necessary a forced sale of Google’s ad tech products would be if we assumed Google would faithfully follow all the restrictions on its behavior. Lee said if that were the case, behavioral restrictions could be sufficient but only if they could capture all problematic behavior upfront, and if deviations could be quickly detected.
I’m back at court for the third day of the government’s case-in-chief. The judge made clear she wants to hear from more technical witnesses who can tell her about how the different proposals would work.
Brinkema was getting tired of hearing from industry witnesses by the end of Tuesday, and told the parties she’s looking to home in on the technical feasibility of a break up and other remedies. The government said it would aim to cut to its technical witnesses when court resumes Wednesday.
That’s how several witnesses described the impact of the technology on Google’s dominance. While AI might be creating new opportunity in online ads, it hasn’t fundamentally changed the way display advertising works, and Google’s unshakeable hold on it, they testified.
The Trade Desk Chief Revenue Officer Jed Dederick said after years of stagnation in the display ad market Google dominated, he’s finally optimistic it can see innovation with the right remedies. Google is painting the decline in display ads as a sign of its increasing irrelevance, but Dederick says a break up could incentivize more investment in it.
Government witnesses had different takes on whether a potential acquirer should be allowed buy both of Google’s sell-side tools, if forced to divest, or just one. Kevel’s Avery thinks it would work best to sell them together, but Omnicom’s Lambert fears that would just recreate the same problem that exists with Google.
Government witnesses across the ad ecosystem have testified that transparency is at the top of their wishlist for remedies to achieve. That means knowing why some bids on ads win over others. They say that publishers and advertisers alike have little insight into this today, since that decision ultimately happens in the “black box” of Google’s ad server.
Several witnesses for the DOJ have advocated that the government go even farther than it’s proposed by forcing Google to sell its publisher ad server from the outset, in addition to its ad exchange. “You can’t take half the antibiotics and hope the disease goes away,” Jay Friedman from the Goodway Group testified.
Luke Lambert, who works for a subsidiary of Omnicom Media Group, testified that even a one day outage of Google’s AdX exchange would cause “extreme” pain for his team because they would need to scramble to find new ways to spend ad budgets. Google’s attorney is suggesting that could be the case if AdX has to be divested to a new buyer.