Ad Tech Briefing: Google readies its last stand in latest antitrust trial

However, doesn’t everyone whose head office isn’t located in Mountain View, CA? The latest round of quarterly earnings calls demonstrated how companies are lining up to profit from Google’s woes.

Truly, the fate of the industry will be decided in the coming days and weeks. Below is a roundup of the latest on what you need to know.

Search remedies any day now

Most immediately, Judge Amit Mehta’s expected remedies ruling in the Google search antitrust trial are due by the close of August, with potential Chrome bidders including Search.com and Perplexity — both of which publicized respective bids of up to $35 billion in recent days. Interest from OpenAI and Yahoo has also been noted.

Elsewhere among Google’s various antitrust travails, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Google and the DOJ are entering the final stage of their ad tech antitrust battle, after Judge Brinkema earlier ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, but dismissed claims related to the advertiser network.

To recap, the DOJ seeks a three-phase remedy: opening data access for its ad exchange, AdX, open-sourcing the auction logic of its ad server, also known as DoubleClick for Publishers, and divesting both businesses.

For its part, Google argues divestiture is not workable on several fronts, maintaining it is illegal, technically unworkable, and stifles innovation, especially as AI reshapes the sector. 

Government witnesses

In recent days, both sides have submitted their witness lists for the upcoming remedies hearing in this trial, which contain dozens of names, including a slew of familiar ones, such as Andrew Casale, Arnaud Créput, Jay Friedman, Jason Kint, Stephanie Layser, and Michael Racic. Another notable (pending) name on said lists is PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel, with either side reserving the right to call further witnesses to the stand, plus call witnesses from the opposing side’s roster of experts.

The remedies exhibit list of both sides also involves dozens of entries, and perhaps most tellingly (in terms of the strategic underpinning of its argument), the DOJ’s includes a blog post entitled “A new chapter for the open internet — Change is in the air,” attributed to Prebid president Mike Racic. 

Here, Racic issues a “call to arms”, underlining the critical role of open-source technology in fostering a more equitable ad tech ecosystem, especially following the recent ruling from presiding Judge Leonie Brinkema. According to Racic, amid regulatory shifts and rapid technological evolution, the article also rejects consolidation in favor of broad industry-wide collaboration. In it, Prebid’s Racic invites all market participants — including Google — to join a united front built on open standards and transparent practices, advocating for solutions that can be implemented swiftly, “in months, not years.”

Racic also argues that an open web cannot thrive under the dominance of a single player — it requires a community. Prebid positions itself as ready to lead but calls for a collective effort among publishers, advertisers, platforms, and technologists to reshape the digital advertising landscape around transparency, interoperability, and innovation.

Google’s defense tactics

Google counters government arguments with behavioral remedies, including AdX integration with rivals, publisher data portability, and adjustments to auction logic.

Subsequently, Google’s arguments are significantly more extensive — literally, hundreds of items have been prepared and entered into the courtroom documentation — with its witnesses including James Avery, Shane Goodwin, Jason Nieh, and Scott Sheffer. The remedies-phase exhibit list also includes several items of Digiday reporting, with those submitted offering an insight into the damage-limitation tactics it intends to employ in the coming weeks.

Indeed, the submissions also seem to raise the point that some of Google’s efforts in recent years were magnanimous. In particular, arguments suggest that initiatives to deprecate third-party cookies would simultaneously improve publishers’ yield while also benefiting user privacy — presumably by nudging the online ad industry to rely more on first-party data. 

Elsewhere, the articles for submission highlight how other behemoths of the industry have deemed the behavioral advertising sector worth a gamble during the era in debate. Take, for example, Oracle Advertising — a 10-year run that cost the company $4 billion in acquisitions, before it recently shuttered its efforts. Meta and Microsoft, although a call in the plaintiff’s favor, are notable in that neither was able to make a success of the ad-serving business, Atlas.

However, such players later performed a U-turn after they deemed the juice of publisher monetization as ultimately not worth the squeeze. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Google’s policies are precluding all competition. Ironically, Amazon’s continued rise is likely to be a key weapon in Google’s defense team’s arsenal.

Elsewhere, defense lawyers are likely to highlight how Google’s policies and technologies far from hamstring the sector, with investors’ eagerness to continually challenge its number one spot in the market as vindication of the sector’s robust health, not one that is hobbled by the dominance of a single entity. 

Of course, the outcome, regardless of how the decision turns out, is likely to set the template for the industry for the remainder of the year, with mergers and acquisitions likely on the horizon. 

Trial proceedings are scheduled to formally recommence on Sept. 22, 2025, after a pre-trial conference on Sept. 15.

What we’ve heard

“It’s Q3. Do you know where your discounts & rebates are? This is one of the first questions I would ask my agency if I led media investments for a brand.”

— Dial-up Media’s Jared Lake underlines the need for transparency in the market, emphasizing how hiding margin leads to misaligned goals, which leads to less effective outcomes.

Numbers to know

• $200 billion: The valuation Perplexity is seeking, the same week it tabled a bid for Chrome
• 63%: The amount of ad tech pros who say they’d be more productive on a 4-day work week, per AdTech Connect
• 3,400: The number of jobs Dentsu is cutting from its headcount, equivalent to 8%, in the latest scaled agency cull. 
• 35%: The annual revenue jump for Zeta Global, which moved to the top of the class in terms of stock price increases, after ad tech’s Q2 report cards were handed in.  

What we’ve covered

Why Reddit is pivoting from social platform to ‘go-to search engine’ with COO Jennifer Wong

Reddit is positioning itself as a “go-to search engine,” integrating AI-powered Reddit Answers with core search for rollout soon. COO Jennifer Wong says the push aligns with driving measurable marketing outcomes, particularly at the mid- and lower-funnel stages.

Confessions of an agency exec on using AI in global campaigns despite regulation

U.S. federal lawmakers haven’t regulated AI, leaving only varied state rules, while Europe enforces stricter laws. Global brands face uncertainty as agencies weigh regulatory, structural, and cultural factors shaping generative AI’s role in marketing campaigns.

What we’re reading

AI search shakes ad tech — but here’s how companies are looking to cash in

Garret Sloane at Ad Age covers how ad tech companies are bracing themselves for disruption as AI-powered search reshapes the internet experience. While the latest earnings season showed no immediate decline in web traffic, leaders at Magnite, PubMatic, Taboola, and DoubleVerify are eyeing ways to capitalize on this opportunity and turn it into the next big ad market.

ANA finds programmatic ‘waste’ has increased 34% in two years

MediaPost notes that while considerable improvements have been made in the efficiency of their ad spending over the past couple of years, major advertisers are losing the programmatic media-buying arms race, with the level of “wasted” ad spending rising 34% to $26.8 billion from just $20.0 billion when the Association of National Advertisers released its first benchmark in June 2023.

Walmart ends data exclusivity for The Trade Desk: good news for other DSPs

The chief analyst for W Media Research, Karsten Weide, opines on just what the breakup between retail media giant Walmart and The Trade Desk means for the wider ecosystem, including its own designs on the ad tech sector.  

A Gen Xer sold his company for $1.6 billion. He kept less than $100 million and gave the rest away because he doesn’t ‘believe in billionaires’

Ad tech doyen and Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley tells Fortune magazine that happiness does have a price.