Navigating the Impact of Google’s Antitrust Battle: A Strategic Perspective

For advertisers and publishers alike, it’s an understatement to say that Google is a major part of what they do. Since the launch of its search engine in 1998, to its DoubleClick acquisition a decade later in 2008, Google has grown into a dominant force when it comes to online advertising. So much so, that it remains a market leader with over $ 275 billion in yearly advertising revenue.

It’s no surprise that with a lot of things that Google does, the advertising industry is left to deal with cataclysmic changes. In the past year alone, Google attempted to push and invariably roll back its cookie deprecation strategy. This change, according to an IAB survey, created considerable confusion and a lack of clarity in the industry. Further, the introduction of the company’s AI integrations left many publishers and advertisers unsure about the state of search. For Google, such developments are a series of inflection points that further establish its scale and position in the market.

And, it’s this scale and position that’s being challenged in an anti-trust lawsuit.

Where it all began – search

Just as Google’s journey began with search, so did the antitrust proceedings against it. In 2023, the Department of Justice started proceedings with claims that Google used agreements to make its search engine the default option with most mobile carriers – a claim hotly contested by Google. However, the company’s market share of 89.2%, along with its agreements to be the default option across most browsers and devices, was deemed sufficient evidence.

The adtech antitrust proceedings take a different perspective, stipulating that Google has competing interests in the marketplace it operates in – representing both the buy and sell side and the influence it exerts. This also extends to several related areas pertaining to data, pricing, and transparency, among others. While the course of these proceedings is likely to continue over the next few weeks, they present a fundamental question – what happens if Google is forced to break off its businesses?

A new horizon?

With such an event, most publishers and advertisers stand to gain access to a larger open market. Such an open market could introduce:

• More competition for services, potentially driving innovation, better pricing, and diversity in ad solutions.
• While this could in turn mean more fragmentation when developing ad tech ecosystems, it does imply a potentially healthier marketplace, particularly in terms of pricing, which is likely to get more competitive.
• Consumer data is likely to be more compliant from a privacy standpoint, as a diverse programmatic chain will ensure adherence to compliant data practices and unprecedented transparency.

It could also pave the way for more such proceedings against big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others.

The realities

The void that will be formed on the back of such an outcome is, however, likely to create near to mid term confusion and disruption in the market. For all its dominance, Google does represent a highly integrated ecosystem (much like most other big tech companies). To divest, and this is likely a consideration for most businesses, it would require careful evaluation and considerations in building an independent ecosystem.

Building such an ecosystem will require a comprehensive assessment of capabilities, offerings, and integrations, aligning them with existing processes and outcomes. Various adtech components such as bidders, creative & media, data management platforms, privacy workflows, and reporting will need to come together for it to make a compelling, comparable solution. Further, establishing such a solution will require considerable experimentation. For most businesses, this is likely going to require a considerable lift in technology and operational expertise.

The new wave of transformation

For businesses looking to divest, re-evaluate their ecosystem or optimize their operations, leveraging a deep knowledge and innovation partner such as MediaMint could be beneficial. Such partners help offer industry-leading practices, identify blind spots, and provide the impetus and agility to experiment as a new norm is established.

With its clients, including leading publishers in the space, MediaMint has helped manage and optimize migrations between enterprise-grade platforms including DSPs, SSPs, and Ad Servers. In such migrations, a key outcome achieved was the ability to experiment while ensuring no disruption in business operations. And, ultimately, as with any transformation, the new norm should not include disruptions to business as usual.

For the industry, these proceedings (and the lead-up to them) have raised existential questions about the adtech ecosystem. And, in the coming months, these questions are likely going to require a careful evaluation of how best to future-proof operations.