Publishers’ scorecard on Google’s ad tech remedies: they’re progress, but far from a clean win

Seven senior executives from publisher revenue teams and sell-side ad tech vendors participated in the scorecard. They were asked to rate each remedy on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 meant “cosmetic or largely symbolic” and 10 meant “materially changes how publishers can compete and make money,” and explain the thinking behind their scores. 

“This ruling moves us toward the pipes flowing more evenly,” said Amit Grover, CEO of sell-side programmatic sales firm KPI Village, “but it doesn’t do enough about the source of the water, which is Google’s demand.”

The average total score sources gave was a firm 5/10. 

“Don’t expect your business to change overnight,” said Scott Messer. But he urged publishers to watch where the ad tech fabric gets repaired or newly woven in ways that change how they can operate. In his view, the real story now is how AdX, Prebid and Google’s own buying tools (like AdWords) interact under the new rules, and whether any of this throws a wrench into Google’s ability to act as the dominant buying agent for open web display.

Publishers aren’t treating the package as a sudden U‑turn from Google, either. “There’s a lot here that publishers should be encouraged by, particularly opening real-time AdX bidding to Prebid and competing ad servers,” said Eric Hochberger, co-founder and CEO of Mediavine. “But several of the remedies address practices Google has already changed, and some of the most important changes are limited in scope or will take time to implement. There’s real potential here, but we need to see how it works in practice before calling it a complete win.”

The below is not a comprehensive list or scoresheet of the remedies. Digiday has selected which remedies publishers and sell-side execs were most interested in. Results represent an average of all scores. In a few edge cases where executives declined to give a firm number, their views are reflected in the qualitative analysis rather than the scorecard. 

Remedy: Open AdX bidding to rival servers

Google must let its ad exchange send live, real-time bids to publishers using non-Google ad servers —not just Google’s GAM.  

Average score: 6/10

Reason for score: This remedy achieved by far the most consistent high scores across the group, though the average was reduced by one particularly low score. That exec, who requested anonymity, argued it should be a 9/10 if it sticks, but he gave it a 2 because he expects it to be neutered in practice.

If enforced properly, it should strip out a lot of the fear and second-guessing around leaving GAM, said several publisher sources. Once AdX is no longer tied to Google’s own ad server, there’s less room for Google to quietly put its thumb on the scale against publishers who choose rival ad servers. 

“For years, publishers on a non-Google ad server couldn’t get AdX demand on equal footing, which was one of the clearest levers Google used to keep sell-side lock-in,” said Alex Newberry, chief revenue officer at ContentIgnite, which manages ad sales and ops for publishers like Candr Media. “In theory, a publisher could now run a competing ad server and still access Google’s demand pool without leaving yield on the table.”

Hochberger called this remedy a “huge” win for publishers that have been pushing Google to open up AdX. Being able to access live AdX bids through a rival ad server, he said, could finally let publishers switch stacks without sacrificing Google demand. He noted that it doesn’t include video, and there’s still a long road to implementation, so he stopped short of calling it a complete fix. 

Caveat: It’s still unclear whether Google’s own AdWords demand, the biggest buyer in AdX, will actually show up and bid when the auction runs through a non-Google ad server. Plus, the commitment language is vague, stressed a source who is familiar with the remedies but asked to remain anonymous. That leaves a gap between what regulators think they’ve secured and what Google actually has to do.

They noted that there is no target for reducing GAM’s market share, so the underlying monopoly is untouched. Meanwhile, the alternative ad server market is already hollowed out, and there are few viable rivals to move to. 

On top of that, publishers bear all the risk of switching, so any revenue loss or migration pain is on them, which means most won’t act, they stressed. 

They argue it needed a stronger package: incentives or enforcement to bring GAM’s share down; a monitoring trustee with data from GAM and third-party servers to prove AdWords demand rally follows publishers; and a funded safety net that covers migration costs and makes publishers whole if revenues don’t improve. Without that, this looks like a remedy that sounds big but is unlikely to shift behavior, and risks seeing the same monopoly back in court in a few years. In his view, CTV is “the next case waiting to happen” if regulators duck the hard choices this time.

No penalizing publishers for using rival ad servers

This one is effectively an enforcement backstop for the first remedy above. Without it, Google could make the first remedy technically true but commercially unusable. 

Score: 5/10

Reason for score: While this would technically help level the playing field for other ad servers, publishers generally said it’s not a major issue today, so it would have a “negligible” effect on bottom lines. 

Caveat: Some fear that because Google still controls so much demand, it may remain in publishers’ best interests to run AdX through GAM.

Remedy: Ban on ‘first look’/’last look’ bidding advantages

Google can no longer give its own exchange privileged timing in the auction — seeing other bids before submitting its own, or getting the final word. This was a structural mechanism that let Google’s exchange systematically win impressions. 

Score: 6/10

Reason for score: Google has already said that it stopped both these practices in 2019, so publishers don’t expect dramatic change from this alone. However, it does prevent Google from doing it again. But, ultimately, publishers and sell-side execs were positive about the notion of fair auctions and not being “gazumped” by Google jumping in at the end and beating everyone else’s bid. “[There are] long-term yield benefits if your other buyers win when they should, see increased win rates on your supply, and can more confidently transact with you,” said Justin Woh, vp of Aditude and consultant for publisher Salon.

Caveat: Several said, however, that they’re “skeptical” about how it will be fully enforced. A publishing exec at a major global news organization noted they may lose the upside from those occasions where Google’s privileged second auction would have pushed the price higher than anyone else was initially willing to pay. 

Remedy: Header bidding trafficking available to everyone

All publishers must be allowed to set different price floors for different buyers and exchanges rather than being forced into one uniform floor price across all buying tools: restoring their ability to manage yield. 

Score: 7/10

Reason for score: In theory, this cracks open Google’s walled-garden exchange to real outside competition, which is what publishers have been pushing for since they adopted header bidding to route around Google’s control. Google had already started down this road voluntarily, testing a header bidding trafficking tool (HBT) as early as 2022. The remedies now legally require Google to open up its ad server and exchange to the broader, open-source header bidding ecosystem.

HBT has helped publishers automate and manage thousands of header bidding line items, said Messer. Widening it to everyone will be particularly helpful for smaller publishers that want to better manage their line items, and may care less about transparency or granular control, given it will be made available in GAM Small Business, he added. Other executives said this should give them better tools to validate which SSP partnerships are actually working.

“This genuinely opens Google’s exchange to competitive bidding outside its own walled garden — a reversal publishers have been asking for since header bidding first emerged as a workaround to Google’s control,” said Newberry. 

Caveat: “I don’t think anyone thinks it [HBT] is perfect, and I don’t think it’s as transparent as publishers want,” said Messer, adding that “letting Google ‘black box’ your Prebid is pretty antithetical here.” It cuts against the original point of header bidding: to be open, transparent and not controlled by a single dominant player. 

Another catch is that less sophisticated publishers without strong header bidding setups could struggle to capitalize on it, added Newberry.

Remedy: Scrap unified pricing rules

Publishers must be allowed to set different price floors for different buyers and exchanges, rather than being forced into one uniform floor price across all buying tools — restoring their ability to actively manage yield. 

Score: 5/10

Reason for score: This gives publishers a finer degree of control on flooring, and they can choose to floor AdX higher, stressed Messer. “However, floor pricing is a mix of science and art, so just because you have the capability doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate to more revenue,” he added. 

Grover said this is one of the stronger remedies, though he said smaller and less experienced publishers will benefit most. “The sophisticated ones have had ways to manage yield within the UPR setup for a while, so for them it’s more about cutting the overhead and operational work vs generating additional revenue,” he said. 

Caveat: While this does mean publishers are free to set the rules of their own inventory, how accurately they can manage to do that remains an open question. “I don’t know how accurate any one publisher will be at this,” said Wohl. “Buyers have many supply paths available to them at all times through prebid, so impact on bottom line here is likely to be small in the long run,” he added. 

In practice, the real tension may be around how far publishers push AdX-specific floors, and how Google’s exchange reacts if it’s consistently forced to bid against elevated, asymmetric pricing, explained Messer. “The Trade Desk already said they really don’t like seeing different floor prices for the same impression across SSPs, or even within the same one via reselling,” he added. 

Remedy: Data portability for publishers

Google must let publishers freely export their ad-server configuration and historical performance data to move to a rival ad server, including free APIs and technical documentation.

Score: 4/10

Reason for score: On paper, data portability sounds like a big win. In reality, publishers already had some level of access to this information in GAM, so the main upside is cost if it forces Google to make log-level data free. Doing so could “save $2,500 to $10,000 per month for publishers,” said Messer.

Newberry argues this marks “meaningful new visibility into a black-box auction publishers have complained about for years, finally being able to see how ad candidates are priced and adjusted.” So a real win for transparency and auditing. 

Caveat: Beyond the potential monthly cost savings if access to log-file data is made free, execs don’t see this radically changing much. The upshot: nice in theory, but most alternative ad servers probably don’t want or need to ingest a publisher’s full historical data, so the competitive impact feels modest. 

It’s more of a transparency win, not a portability win. It doesn’t give publishers the kind of portable, platform-agnostic data they’d need to freely move between ad servers. “It’s useful for auditing Google’s behavior, not the full data ownership win publishers wanted,” said Newberry. 

“Data portability sounds great, but where are publishers actually going to take that data?” said Hochberger. “Most competing publisher ad servers disappeared years ago. The more interesting question is what a modern ad server looks like in 2026 and beyond. In an era of Prebid, AI, and agentic buying, the next alternative may look very different from the ad servers Google competed with a decade ago,” he said. 

Remedy: End mandatory product bundling (AdX and DFP)

Contracts for AdX and DFP must be entirely separate agreements, preventing Google from quietly rebundling terms. 

Score:4/10  

Reason for score: On paper, unbundling AdX and DFP into separate contracts sounds like a major structural shift, but in practice it’s more of a billing change than a competition reset. 

The bigger story is financial, stresses Messer. “This may cause ad serving fees to increase since most of the AdX ‘bonus’ went against serving fees. Particularly, Google would credit back ad serving fees on any impressions won by AdX. For some publishers, this was  50%+ of their monthly bill,” he said. 

—Sara Guaglione assisted in the reporting of this article.