Google willing to share digital ad data with publishers to address monopoly, executive testifies | Latest Tech News
Google is willing to cough up more promoting data to publishers to address considerations about its unlawful monopoly over digital promoting technology, a top executive at the search giant said Tuesday.
Glenn Berntson, an engineering director for Google Ad Manager, acknowledged the potential remedy during the second week of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Virginia federal court. He was called as a witness by Google’s protection attorneys.
Providing “publishers with these detailed insights, I think, is a good idea,” Berntson said during cross-examination by the Justice Department’s attorneys, according to Bloomberg. “The specifics is something we’d have to explore.”
Google is willing to share more promoting data to publishers to address considerations about its unlawful monopoly over digital promoting technology. AFP via Getty Images
Google is making an attempt to wriggle out of a more damaging pressured breakup of its digital promoting empire. The DOJ has argued that Google ought to be required to promote its key ad exchange, AdX, to restore truthful competitors and shield news publishers and advertisers that rely on the system.
Any remedy short of divestiture ought to be a “hard pass,” according to Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a commerce group that represents online publishers.
“What publishers need isn’t another last-minute desperate gesture from Google as they try to avoid absolutely necessary structural remedies,” said Kint. “The Department of Justice has put on a brilliant case presenting remedies that will actually stop Google’s illegal conduct harming publishers, deny Google the fruits of it, restore competition and to avoid re-monopolization going forward.”
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who has last say over which remedies to implement, ruled in April that Google had violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online writer ad server market, as properly as the ad-exchange market that connects ad patrons to sellers.
The shared data might embrace particulars on how Google’s ad server determines which show adverts to show – boosting transparency about the inside workings the public sale system that the company makes use of to buy and promote ad space in real time, according to Berntston.
The DOJ has also proposed that Google make the public sale course of more clear by sharing data, but Berntson testified on the stand that merely releasing source code about the public sale course of wouldn’t essentially help publishers perceive it.
Instead, Berntson said Google might release a breakdown explaining its digital public sale course of. At the same time, he admitted that bigger publishers with more assets would possible need to see the source code itself.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that Google had violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online writer ad server market, as properly as the ad-exchange market that connects ad patrons to sellers. REUTERS
On the stand, Berntson was “incredibly non-committal and fairly vaguely acknowledged that transparency is good,” according to Arielle Garcia, the COO of Check My Ads, a digital ad industry watchdog.
“Technical documentation isn’t a substitute for allowing publishers to independently audit the data about their own campaigns or to see the underlying logic, so this is yet another surface-level commitment that doesn’t do much,” Garcia said.
News publishers and other Google critics have long complained that the public sale course of for ad gross sales is simply too opaque and leaves companies at a loss to clarify how adverts are chosen.
The trial’s remedy section is predicted to conclude as soon as this week. Google has vowed to appeal Brinkema’s authentic discovering that it has a monopoly in digital promoting.
Attorneys for Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, said the DOJ’s proposal for pressured divestiture might break the technology, inflicting disruption for the companies that rely on the system to do business.
Rather than a breakup, Google has floated making the instruments simpler to use and more appropriate with third-party instruments.
Attorneys for Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, said the DOJ’s proposal for pressured divestiture might break the technology, inflicting disruption for the companies that rely on the technology to do business. AP
However, in a key second last week, Google promoting executive Tim Craycroft admitted under the DOJ’s questioning that the company held inner discussions about the feasibility of promoting half of its ad business as not too long ago as last yr, The Information reported.
The final result of the case represents a potential existential risk for Google, which dodged the worst-case state of affairs in a separate antitrust case concentrating on its online search business earlier this month.
In that case, US District Judge Amit Mehta shot down the DOJ’s request for a pressured selloff of Google’s Chrome web browser. Instead, he required Google to share more search data with rivals.
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