Google consistently charges ~ 20% fee for impressions bought through its ad network

III. DISPLAY ADVERTISING TRANSACTIONS

B. How Ad Tech Intermediaries Get Paid

57. Once the winning bid has been chosen, the advertiser pays the website publisher for the impression, but a portion of the payment is retained by each intermediary along the way as payment for its services. The advertiser buying tool and the ad exchange supplying the winning bid each collect a portion of the purchase price for the impression, which is referred to as a “revenue share” or “take rate.” The publisher ad server generally charges the publisher a fee based on the number of impressions served. Unlike a revenue share, the publisher ad server fee typically does not vary based upon the price paid for each particular impression.

58. The total percentage of advertiser spend extracted by ad tech intermediaries can have a substantial impact on the revenue website publishers earn from advertising and on the return on investment that advertisers receive from their advertising campaigns. But this percentage is typically not fully transparent to advertisers or publishers; some fees are disclosed only to publishers or advertisers while other fees are obscured or not disclosed at all. According to Google’s internal documents, when a transaction passes through each of Google’s ad tech tools (including Google’s campaign manager product, which helps advertisers manage ad content and track campaign spending), Google estimates that it gets to keep about 35% of every dollar spent on digital advertising (as shown in Figure 4 below).

59. These technology platforms have provided essentially the same services for over a decade. During that time, Google’s monopoly positions and the restrictions it has imposed across these technologies have diminished the incentive and ability for Google or others to innovate. This reduced innovation is compounded by high prices: despite publishers’ and advertisers’ interests in reducing the amount of advertising spending siphoned off by intermediaries, Google’s take rate has remained remarkably stable over time. In particular, Google has consistently charged a roughly 20% fee for impressions bought through its ad exchange, the link in the chain where the highest fees are charged.