Google says its control over advertising technology ensures customer safety

In an antitrust lawsuit against the Department of Justice, Google said its control over many parts of the ad technology landscape allowed it to make digital advertising safer, the Verge reported.

Currently, Google is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by 17 US states, which accuses Google of abusing its monopoly and dominance in the digital advertising (ad tech) market, acting to the detriment of website publishers and advertisers.

The Justice Department has accused Google of forcing advertisers to adopt its own ad technology tools and making it harder for customers to switch to competitors’ products. She also accused Google of poaching competitors to exert more control over the process and charge higher prices for its tools. The company argued that this control allowed it to make advertising space more secure for advertisers, publishers and users.

How does the ad technology process work?

Online publishers provide advertising space called “impressions” and use auctions to fill it. The publisher needs an “ad server” to connect with advertisers that identifies available ad spaces. The “ad exchange” then facilitates the auction of these impressions, doing mainly two things – selling ad space to publishers and allowing advertisers to bid on ad space.

The “Ad Exchange” forwards the advertiser’s bids to the “ad server,” which then selects the bid that best suits the publisher, and the ad is placed on the site. All this happens in fractions of a second. Google Ad Exchange charges advertisers a commission to facilitate the auction.

What was Google’s defense?

Google called two witnesses to testify: Per Bjorke, director of product management for ad traffic quality, and Alejandro Borgia, director of product management for ad security.

Bjorke argued that Google made every effort to combat fraud and block advertisers with malicious intent. He claimed that opening the system had led to security incidents in the past. In early 2010, he said, the Google Ads advertising network was considering allowing its massive advertiser to bid on exchanges other than Google’s AdX. This allegedly turned out to be a major challenge for Google as it had less say while keeping bad actors at bay. Bjorke said there were “clear and significant benefits” to closing the facility.

This argument sought to demonstrate that Google’s control of advertising space was a business decision and not an anti-competitive act. As an example, Bjorke cited the 2018 3ve botnet scam, in which fraudsters made $36 million from fake advertising.