Digital advertisers need to think beyond Google

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) antitrust case against Google may have wrapped up, but whether the court rules for or against it, there’s no denying the case highlighted a crucial issue—the company’s dominant hold over the digital advertising market. And the advertising and ad tech ecosystem will need to make changes for a more transparent, efficient advertising market.

Starting as a simple search engine, Google has evolved into a behemoth of interlinked products, expanding its empire with tools like AdSense, which transformed millions of websites into ad sellers. One of the most crucial moments in Google’s rise to dominance came with its acquisition of DoubleClick, a platform that served and tracked ads, giving it control over a vast majority of global ad transactions. It also created a digital ad exchange on top of DoubleClick, similar to the National Stock Exchange but for real-time digital ad auctions.

Furthermore, with tools like DV360, its platform that buys ads on behalf of advertisers, Google has consolidated power at nearly every stage of the advertising process, and this has raised concerns from regulators like the DoJ. Also read | Data drought: The absence of reliable metrics is thwarting advertisers and marketers in India Google’s position within the digital ad ecosystem—acting as the auctioneer, server and mediator for millions of transactions every second—jeopardized the ability of advertisers to act with precision, stifled revenue for publishers and resulted in a digital ecosystem where fairness and transparency is often an afterthought. This isn’t Google’s first run-in with regulators.