Google's Ad Tech Monopoly Remedies Favor Big Publishers Over Smaller Ones

After 17 months of speculation, Google's remedies to its ad tech monopoly have been revealed. The Department of Justice (DOJ) lost nearly every fight over how strict and fast these remedies would be, but it still managed to force behavioral change onto a business that had operated on its own terms for over a decade.

The remedies are largely focused on Google's ad exchange (AdX) and its ad server (DfP). While rival exchanges like Index Exchange, PubMatic, OpenX, and others get real-time bid access to AdX through Prebid, the open-source tool most publishers already run their auctions through, Google still owns and controls the auction logic behind it.

The largest winners from these remedies are large, resourced publishers. They will now have access to historical and configuration data from DfP, along with data on every winning and losing bid across every AdX auction. This can be exported straight to rival publisher ad servers, giving them a significant advantage over smaller publishers.

The DOJ itself is not a clear winner or loser in this case. It lost nearly every fight over the strictness and speed of the remedies but still managed to force behavioral change onto Google's business.