Google ad tech remedies trial begins with Churchill, Whac-A-Mole and AI

The remedies phase of the Google ad tech antitrust trial began Monday with a Winston Churchill quote, comparisons to a game of Whac-A-Mole and, of course, some AI talk.

Over the next two weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice and Google will make the case for their respective remedy proposals following the April ruling that found Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the open web display ad exchange and publisher ad server markets.

To sum those proposals up: The DOJ is asking that Judge Leonie M. Brinkema order Google to divest its ad exchange, AdX, which would break up the company’s ad tech business.

Google proposed, in part, making real-time bids from AdX for open-web display ads available to competing publisher ad servers, as well as giving publishers the choice to put Prebid in between its ad exchange and ad server.

Julia Tarver Wood, an attorney for the DOJ, quoted Churchill in her opening comments: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Google attorney Karen Dunn, in turn, called the DOJ’s proposals “radical and reckless” and a “swing for the fences.”

Here’s what advertisers should know about the remedies trial so far:

Google’s ‘Whac-A-Mole’ tactics

Wood argued that Google’s proposal is “like putting a Band-Aid on a seriously severed limb” and that anything less than divestiture would allow the company to continue engaging in anticompetitive advertising practices.

A presentation accompanying Wood’s opening remarks illustrated a game of Whac-A-Mole, with each mole representing First Look, Last Look and unified pricing rules — all tactics Brinkema had found helped Google scale at the expense of competitors.

In the presentation, the DOJ notes that the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets are “broken” — charts illustrate that Google’s publisher ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), controls 91% of the market share and AdX controls 56%.

The first witnesses on Day 1 of the remedies trial — Grant Whitmore, vice president of ad technology and programmatic revenue at Advance Local, and Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange — both testified that AdX should be divested.

“We had to agree to things that we never would have agreed to with any other provider,” Whitmore said of Google’s tactics.

He later testified: “Google has demonstrated their ability to adapt their business in a manner that continually grants them an advantage.” 

Is Google playing the AI card?

Dunn mentioned in her opening arguments how AI is transforming ad tech.

This follows recent statements from Google about the changing nature of the industry.

In a blog post last week, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, wrote that the DOJ’s case “ignores how the landscape has dramatically evolved, with increasing competition and new entrants.”

And in a LinkedIn post on Monday, Google Vice President of Global Ads Dan Taylor wrote that the DOJ’s case is “backwards-looking” and ignores “advancements in new technology” that have “accelerated over the past few years.”

Remember, in the recent remedies ruling for the Google search antitrust case, the judge focused on how AI had impacted the search landscape and “changed the course of this case.”

But on Tuesday, Day 2 of the ad tech remedies trial, Kevel CEO James Avery testified he hadn’t seen AI’s impacts on the publisher ad server market.