Part 37 - First Claim for Relief: Monopolization of the Publisher Ad Server Market in Violation

VIII. VIOLATIONS ALLEGED

First Claim for Relief: Monopolization of the Publisher Ad Server Market in Violation of Sherman Act § 2

310. Plaintiffs incorporate the allegations of paragraphs 1 through 309 above.

311. Publisher ad servers for open web display advertising in the United States or, in the alternative, worldwide is a relevant antitrust market, and Google has monopoly power in that market.

312. Google has unlawfully monopolized the publisher ad server market through a course of exclusionary conduct described herein. While each of Google’s actions increased, maintained, or protected its publisher ad server monopoly and/or market power in adjacent markets, the following exclusionary conduct—taken together—played a particularly important role in unlawfully establishing or maintaining a publisher ad server monopoly:

(1) Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick to obtain not only a dominant publisher ad server, DFP, but also a nascent ad exchange, AdX, in order to pursue its goal of dominance across the entire ad tech stack;

(2) Google’s restriction of Google Ads’ advertiser demand exclusively to AdX;

(3) Google’s restriction of effective real-time access to AdX exclusively to DFP;

(4) Google’s limitation of dynamic allocation bidding techniques exclusively to AdX;

(5) Google’s providing AdX with a “last look” auction advantage over rival exchanges;

(6) Google’s acquisition of AdMeld to stop its yield management technology from promoting multi-homing across ad exchanges;

(7) Google’s use of Project Bell, which lowered, without advertisers’ permission, bids to publishers who dared partner with Google’s competitors;

(8) Google’s deployment of sell-side Dynamic Revenue Share to manipulate auction bids—again, without publishers’ knowledge—to advantage AdX;

(9) Google’s use of Project Poirot to thwart the competitive threat of header bidding by secretly and artificially manipulating DV360’s advertiser bids on rival ad exchanges using header bidding in order to ensure transactions were won by Google’s AdX; and

(10) Google’s veiled introduction of so-called Unified Pricing Rules that took away publishers’ power to transact with rival ad exchanges at preferred prices.

313. Although each of these acts is anticompetitive in its own right, these interrelated and interdependent actions have had a cumulative and synergistic effect that has harmed competition and the competitive process.

314. Google’s exclusionary conduct has foreclosed a substantial share of the publisher ad server market.

315. Google’s anticompetitive acts have had harmful effects on competition and consumers

316. Google’s exclusionary conduct lacks a procompetitive justification that offsets the harm caused by Google’s anticompetitive and unlawful conduct.