While the Google antitrust case around search made a lot of headlines, the less watched case, focused on advertising technology, marches on. This past Spring Judge Brinkema found Google to be an illegal monopolist in this sector, with evidence they used their dominance in the publisher tools market (ad serving) to capture big swaths of the overall display advertising market. In a two week “remedies” trial that just concluded the two sides argued on what should be done to undo this monopoly power and right the advertising market for competition.
The debate centered around two general topics. First were “behavioral” remedies, which would force Google to interoperate with other advertising technologies. In these proposals, the ads that millions of advertisers run from Google AdWords (now called “Google Ads”) would be bought across multiple publisher ad exchanges and ad servers, allowing for competition and flexibility in those areas. Google argued they should have a narrow set of requirements for bidding, while the plaintiffs’ said that all of the bidding should be non-discriminatory, meaning not advantaging other Google products. At stake is roughly $6 billion in annual ad spend that Google currently keeps for itself.
The second question was around “structural” remedies. The plaintiffs believe that as long as Google controls the pipes in which the ad dollars flow they will inevitably favor themselves. To create a long term competitive playing field, they argued, Google should be forced to spin-out its industry leading ad exchange (often called “AdX”), make big portions of their ad server open source, and eventually even spin-out the ad server itself. This is really meaningful because the ad server (called “GAM” or it’s older name, “DFP”) has a whopping 90% market share among publishers and is one of the most important pieces of technology in the open web.
Google’s counter arguments focused on the risk and complexity of the remedies, with the ultimate point being that they would actually reduce advertising revenue for publishers — presumably the exact parties the case is trying to help. Several publisher witnesses provided conflicting views of whether the case would ultimately help or hurt them, with the smaller company arguing that any change would be dangerous, and larger, more sophisticated entities explaining their need for choice in the market.
Closing arguments are coming on November 17th, and a final judgment sometime in early 2026. While we don’t know how soon any of these changes might be implemented, the impact on publishers within the open web — already being battered by consumers’ shift to AI over search results — hangs in the balance.
Ari is a journalist and media mogul focused on the advertising business. His company, Marketecture, publishes a must-listen podcast of the same name, as well as newsletters and events that give unique insight into the fascinating and complex world of ads. He is a frequent contributor to AdExchanger, Insider and other industry publications as well as a speaker at advertising industry conferences. He is the author of the new book, Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance.
