Google Manipulates Auctions to Protect Its Position, Hinder Rivals, & Work Against Its Own Customers

IV. GOOGLE’S SCHEME TO DOMINATE THE AD TECH STACK

B. Google Uses Its Acquisitions and Position Across the Ad Tech Stack to Lock Out Rivals and Control Each Key Ad Tech Tool

4. Google’s Dominance Across the Ad Tech Stack Gives It the Unique Ability to Manipulate Auctions to Protect Its Position, Hinder Rivals, and Work Against Its Own Customers’ Interests

126. In addition to restricting vital Google Ads’ demand to website publishers using Google’s publisher ad server and ad exchange, Google realized it also could manipulate Google Ads’ bidding strategy to further entrench its publisher ad server and make entry by competing ad servers unworkable. Google Ads ostensibly bought inventory on behalf of its advertisers using price and budget limitations decided by each advertiser. But Google chose to do so in ways that served Google’s long-term goal of dominating publisher platforms.

127. Google Ads’ advertisers set maximum prices,[13] budgets, and other parameters for their campaigns, but Google Ads is otherwise a “black box” to advertisers. Google has nearly full control over when, where, and how Google Ads bids for its advertiser customers. Using that control, Google designed a system intended to force Google Ads’ two million advertisers to pay higher advertising prices. The goal and effect are clear: increase payouts to publishers using Google’s platforms—the only place Google Ads’ demand was available—to make Google Ads’ advertising demand and Google’s publisher ad server and ad exchange even more indispensable to publishers (while also allowing Google to maintain its supra-competitive take rates). In doing so, Google foreclosed the ability of rivals to compete effectively against its publisher ad server business and further propelled Google’s DFP ad server from a dominant platform to a monopoly.

128. Over time, as Google’s monopoly over the publisher ad server was secured, Google surreptitiously manipulated its Google Ads’ bids to ensure it won more high-value ad inventory on Google’s ad exchange while maintaining its own profit margins by charging much higher fees on inventory that it expected to be less competitive. In doing so, Google was able to keep both categories of inventory out of the hands of rivals by competing in ways that rivals without similar dominant positions could not. In doing so, Google preserved its own profits across the ad tech stack, to the detriment of publishers. Once again, Google engaged in overt monopoly behavior by grabbing publisher revenue and keeping it for itself. Google called this plan “Project Bernanke.”

[13] Although advertisers set a maximum price for advertising (generally on a per click basis), Google actually charges advertisers the lower of 1) their maximum price or 2) Google’s cost plus a set margin.