Business Insider has taken Google to court in the US, accusing the company of running an over one decade-long scheme to monopolise digital advertising and drain revenue from publishers.
The 89-page complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Google “uses this monopoly to control how publishers sell their ad slots, forcing publishers to sell growing shares of that ad space through Google at depressed prices”. The lawsuit frames Google’s conduct as part of a deliberate strategy to entrench its power over the ad-tech ecosystem.
According to Business Insider, this dominance not only reduces what publishers earn but also distorts competition, limits advertisers’ choices, and ultimately threatens the sustainability of online journalism.
Google’s Dominance in The Ad Tech Sector
Business Insider’s case rests on Google’s control of two crucial tools in digital advertising. First is DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP): the ad server used by publishers to manage and sell their inventory. The complaint claims DFP commands more than 90% of the publisher ad server market. Second is Google’s AdX exchange, which is alleged to handle between 60% and 70% of all open-web display inventory.
Crucially, the lawsuit argues that Google tied these products together. If publishers wanted access to the millions of advertisers that buy only through Google Ads, they had little choice but to run their inventory through AdX. Moreover, to use AdX effectively, publishers had to rely on DFP.
Therefore, Google’s dominance in one layer of the market reinforced its dominance in another, leaving publishers with no real alternatives.
How The System Allegedly Works
Auction advantages and allocation rules
The complaint lays out a series of practices that, taken together, allegedly allowed Google to tip the balance in its favour.
Earlier auction designs gave Google’s AdX a “Last Look”, which meant it could view the highest rival bid and then outbid it by a penny. Normally, in a real-time auction, the highest bidder simply wins, ensuring publishers earn the best available price. However, Business Insider argues that “Last Look” tilted the game, allowing Google to win impressions without paying more than it had to.
When Google introduced what it called a “Unified Auction”, the complaint says the same advantage returned in a new form. A mechanism known as “Minimum Bid to Win” provided Google with the second-highest bid in each auction, information it could then use to shape future bids. Therefore, even reforms meant to level the field allegedly preserved Google’s edge.
In 2014, Google rolled out Enhanced Dynamic Allocation (EDA), which required publishers to route every single impression through AdX. As a result, publishers lost meaningful control over how they allocated their inventory, and Google gained first access to virtually every impression.
Revenue manipulation and internal…
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