Publishers are effectively forced to use Google’s advertising products, a top publishing executive said in a landmark trial accusing the tech giant of operating a monopoly.
Matthew Wheatland, digital director of dailymail.com, was called by the US Department of Justice as the sole witness to refute Google’s case at the end of a trial that lasted 15 days.
Government lawyers accuse Google of trying to monopolize display advertising on websites and depriving the publishing industry, including news websites, of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
Judge Leonie Brinkema could finally rule that Google exercises a monopoly and force it to sell part of its advertising business.
Billions of ads are bought and sold on websites every day through “programmatic display advertising,” a process that involves automated auctions lasting milliseconds.
Publishers Are Effectively Forced to Use Google’s Advertising Products, Top Publishing Executive Said in Court (File Image)
Judge Leonie Brinkema is in the trial that could ultimately rule that Google operates as a monopoly and force it to sell part of its advertising business.
Google owns the largest ad server used by publishers to sell ads, known as DFP, and the largest tool used by advertisers to buy them, known as Google Ads.
It also runs the largest exchange where auctions are held, which is called AdX.
When combined, those technology tools take 36 cents of every advertising dollar spent on them, government lawyers say.
In its case, Google has argued that it faces competition from Facebook, TikTok and others, and that advertisers are shifting their spending away from websites, rather than into other areas, including apps and social media.
Prosecutor Julia Wood asked Wheatland if advertisers’ shift to social media “affects their dealings with Google as a user of advertising technology.”
He said: ‘That’s really not so. If advertisers change where they execute their ad spend, that doesn’t help the publisher per se. “Those impressions cannot be transferred from the open web to any other medium.”
Mr Wheatland was also asked what he thought about the suggestion made in the test that publishers “work harder” to sell more advertising directly to advertisers, rather than relying on programmatic sales.
He said: ‘We are already working hard to sell direct prints. We work to sell everything we can to direct customers. It is difficult to sell directly. The cost of doing business with direct sales is high. You need all the support staff, sales people, creative, marketing, you need to do post-market reporting.
“In general, direct sales are not how most advertising sales are made on the open web.”
Attorneys Karen Dunn and Jeannie Rhee, both representing Google, arrive at district court for the antitrust case in Alexandria, Virginia.
Mr Wheatland was then asked if he was aware of a trend in which advertisers were spending more on apps and whether the Daily Mail had an app.
He said the publisher had made a “significant investment” in its app.
Separate applications were needed for different operating systems and support staff were also needed, he said. Wheatland added that the trend was to get higher prices for ads on the web than in apps.
He said, “Maybe 2 percent of our readers come to us through the app,” adding, “It’s not possible to move all of our readers from the web to the app.”
Both the DOJ and Google have concluded their evidence and final arguments will be presented in late November.