Part 39 - Second Claim for Relief, in the Alternative: Attempted Monopolization of the Ad Exchange

VIII. VIOLATIONS ALLEGED

Second Claim for Relief, in the Alternative: Attempted Monopolization of the Ad Exchange Market in Violation of Sherman Act § 2

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

325. Ad exchanges for open web display advertising in the United States or, in the alternative, worldwide is a relevant antitrust market, and Google has attempted to monopolize that market.

326. Google has attempted to monopolize the ad exchange market through an exclusionary course of conduct and the anticompetitive acts described herein. While each of Google’s actions collectively increased Google’s market power in the ad exchange and adjacent markets, the following exclusionary conduct—taken together—played a particularly important role in Google’s attempt to attain an ad exchange 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 Ad’s 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 certain prices.

327. 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.

328. In undertaking this course of conduct, Google has acted with a specific intent to monopolize, and to destroy effective competition in, the ad exchange market in the United States. There is a dangerous probability that, unless restrained, Google will succeed in monopolizing the ad exchange market, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

329. Google’s conduct has drastically altered the supply paths through which available display advertising inventory is sold, reducing payouts to publishers, burdening advertisers and publishers with lower-quality matches of advertisements to inventory, and inhibiting choice and innovation across the ad tech stack.