European Publishers File Antitrust Complaint Over Google Ad Tech

Google has an advertising technology stranglehold over publishers, the European Publishers Council (EPC) said in an antitrust complaint filed Friday with the European Commission. Since it acquired DoubleClick in 2008, Google "has embarked on a barrage of unlawful tactics to foreclose competition in ad tech" and has now achieved "end-to-end control of the ad tech value chain," with market share as high as 90%-100% in segments of the chain. Google's ad tech suite is "rife with conflicts of interest" since it represents the buyer and seller in the same transaction while also running the auction house in the middle and selling its own inventory, EPC said. Google's monopolistic conduct "actively depressed publisher revenue" by, for example, preventing publishers from pitting their ad exchange partners against each other to encourage price competition. Lower advertising revenue means press publishers have fewer resources to invest in news content, EPC said. Google said it hasn't seen the complaint in detail but has been working with the EC and industry for many months. Online advertising "has enabled millions of small businesses to afford advertising for the first time, and for news publishers big and small, it's created new opportunities and substantial new revenue streams that did not exist in the print age," a Google spokesperson emailed. On average, news publishers keep over 95% of the digital advertising revenue they generate when they use Google Ad Manager to show ads on their websites, she added.