If you don’t run a fair ad auction – or a transparent one – regulators take notes.
Two very big moments in Big Tech happened last week, and they both centered on how platforms run their auctions.
Judge Brinkema, who previously ruled that Google’s ad tech business was a monopoly, declared last week that Google will not have to spin off its ad tech business. The decision was unsurprising to many in the industry. A spinoff, compared to softer behavioral remedies, would have been interesting – an independent ad server! – but even if the judge had ruled in that direction, change would be delayed until the case worked its way through several years of appeals.
The full text of the ruling, which will be released next week, will clarify what publishers and SSPs could see change after the decision. Among the changes: Publishers can set higher floors for some buyers, like Google, so it pays more for its impressions. And Google will have to share more data about ad auctions with other companies. Last look, which Google already removed, will stay that way.
Then, speaking of auctions that are not as they seem, the FTC is suing Amazon over how it runs its ad auctions. The SMB advertisers on the platform were competing against a shadow participant invented by Amazon, the FTC alleges, which drove up the prices paid for ads. Instead of paying the second price, advertisers paid a higher number pegged to their own bid.
While both cases involve how companies run ad auctions, the FTC has a more limited set of penalties it can impose on Amazon.
