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Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

nytimes.com

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Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#241

Post by mathteddybear »

CPLX wrote: post #158
aiauthoritydev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in AdTech I would respectfully disagree. It is indeed complex but it is incredibly efficient. Also it is irrelevant of whether publisher earns 75% or 30% of the total revenue. What matters is how much they are earning compared to the next best alternative. Some companies like Google are incredible at this. Google is not a "monopoly" in this space. In fact the world has far too many Google eq…

> it is irrelevant of whether publisher earns 75% or 30% of the total revenue Of course it matters if a middleman is skimming off 70% of the revenue in a given market. > it is incredibly efficient On what planet is a loss of 70% of the resources to the matching process between buyers and sellers "incredibly efficient"? > What matters is how much they are earning compared to the next best alternative. Right, which is…

It is 'incredibly efficient' because it is incredibly good at predicting clicks, conversions, or even conversion values. Which in turn makes it efficient. Sure, there is something called "auction" there, but Sothesby's or Tattersalls generally don't have buyers bidding based on what some machine-learning prediction AI computed in a jiffy (or maybe they do these days, who knows).

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#242

Post by turtletontine »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #218

I'm confused how this is a monopoly, is it just the "if we define a market as Google ads, then Google has a monopoly problem"? Like defining iOS apps as a market (and somehow failed)? Even if they play games with the auctions to keep the price up, at the end of the day X company is spending $5 per thousand clicks (or whatever) because they think it's worth it. Google can charge whatever they want, they run the platfo…

Um, no, the market is obviously not defined as “google ads.” You could bother to do one single search (maybe even with google!) before spewing nonsense.

Specifically, part of the case found google liable for “unlawfully [tying] its publisher ad server and ad exchange” in violation of the Sherman antitrust act. Basically, google has locked down both the supply side (sites with space the sell for ads) and demand side (market of advertisers bidding on that space) so it can play both sides - and (crucially!) it has integrated them so as to lock in both advertisers and publishers. That’s how you unfairly build a monopoly.

And funny that you use the App Store as an example. Two years ago google lost an antitrust case brought by epic games about their android store practices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Google?wprov=sft...

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#243

Post by shortrounddev2 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #171
crowcroft wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each middleman (usually) adds some kind of value This is the argument that gets made, but very rarely is it true. From Neumann et al in 2019 [1] "When investigating gender (being male) and age (three different tiers: 18-24, 25-34 and 35-44 years) individually, we find that digital audiences for gender are on average less often correct than random guessing (accuracy of 42.3%)." If the accuracy of targeting is worse…

I have tried to sell ads and never been able to fill all my inventory and often the rates are poor and the ads brand destroying. If you are The New York Times it is different but a site that makes $1000 /mo in ads can’t afford an ads salesperson and in the big scheme of things that is royalty.

Have you tried prebid? It lets you send your bid requests to as many exchanges as you want so you can advertise your inventory to as many DSPs as possible

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#244

Post by [deleted] »

andreimackenzie wrote: post #235
hammock wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And crucially, there are leaked emails, other evidence that demonstrate (at the very least historical and occasional) corruption of this dual- (multi?) agency arrangement. Among the allegations: The Google ad exchange favored its own platforms, limiting the ability of other exchanges to compete fairly in bidding for ad inventory. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... In limiting the number o…

> In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. This part doesn't make sense to me. Limiting bidders should drive the price down, because fewer advertisers are competing for the same potential ad impression. The article describes Google's influence as "Google controls the auction-style system," which is a bit more open-ended about the specific alleged practices.

[deleted]

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#245

Post by moshegramovsky »

Henchman21 wrote: post #99
ndiddy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Google research paper by Brin and Page explicitly points out that a search engine financed by advertising is inherently anti-consumer: > Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cell…

They were really smart guys. But smart guys don’t stand a chance in the face of all that money because it attracts people who know how to manipulate and control smart people . Smart people think they’re at the top of the totem pole. But really its those without ethics who sit at the top in our society. This is a conundrum humanity must address if we’re to survive over the long term, IMO.

This is seriously one of the best things I've ever read here. Extremely well said.

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#246

Post by moshegramovsky »

foobarian wrote: post #219
Henchman21 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were really smart guys. But smart guys don’t stand a chance in the face of all that money because it attracts people who know how to manipulate and control smart people . Smart people think they’re at the top of the totem pole. But really its those without ethics who sit at the top in our society. This is a conundrum humanity must address if we’re to survive over the long term, IMO.

> This is a conundrum humanity must address if we’re to survive over the long term, IMO. Who's to say that this is not actually an evolutionary adaptation that allows the more ruthlessly led tribes to dominate their enemies? The stat about 1/25 of individuals being sociopaths is very telling

Even if you're correct, is that the world you want? (And to be clear, I'm not saying it's the world you want.)

DNA isn't destiny.

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#247

Post by InsomniacL »

andreimackenzie wrote: post #235
hammock wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And crucially, there are leaked emails, other evidence that demonstrate (at the very least historical and occasional) corruption of this dual- (multi?) agency arrangement. Among the allegations: The Google ad exchange favored its own platforms, limiting the ability of other exchanges to compete fairly in bidding for ad inventory. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... In limiting the number o…

> In limiting the number of bidders, Google inflated the prices for ad inventory. This part doesn't make sense to me. Limiting bidders should drive the price down, because fewer advertisers are competing for the same potential ad impression. The article describes Google's influence as "Google controls the auction-style system," which is a bit more open-ended about the specific alleged practices.

> It was argued that this approach allows Google to charge higher prices to advertisers while sending less revenue to publishers such as news websites.

It could depend on how they 'limit the number of bidders'. If they sell seats to be able to bid, then the bids are lower to account for that, and publishers get a share of the bid, not the fee bidders pay. I'm guessing though...

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#248

Post by PaulHoule »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #243
PaulHoule wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to sell ads and never been able to fill all my inventory and often the rates are poor and the ads brand destroying. If you are The New York Times it is different but a site that makes $1000 /mo in ads can’t afford an ads salesperson and in the big scheme of things that is royalty.

Have you tried prebid? It lets you send your bid requests to as many exchanges as you want so you can advertise your inventory to as many DSPs as possible

When I talk about "sell" I mean sell directly with a human touch. Like the way a newspaper or a network of radio stations has actual salespeople that sell ads.

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#249

Post by hnfong »

olyjohn wrote: post #140
whatgoodisaroad wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is an Oracle product

"Java was designed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. It was released in May 1995 as a core component of Sun's Java platform." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language) Oracle did what they always do, buy shit out and then milk people for money. That's all they do with it, and why nobody actually uses Oracle's JDK anymore.

To state the obvious, OpenJDK is also an Oracle product.

Re: Google is illegally monopolizing online advertising tech, judge rules

#250

Post by adrr »

ksec wrote: post #162
aiauthoritydev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in AdTech I would respectfully disagree. It is indeed complex but it is incredibly efficient. Also it is irrelevant of whether publisher earns 75% or 30% of the total revenue. What matters is how much they are earning compared to the next best alternative. Some companies like Google are incredible at this. Google is not a "monopoly" in this space. In fact the world has far too many Google eq…

Thankfully HN is finally at a stage people can come out and talk about Ad tech without being harassed or attacked. Could you explain more on this. What do you think makes Google Ad or DoubleClick so special? And >What matters is how much they are earning compared to the next best alternative. Correct me if I am wrong, you are suggesting even if publisher only earns 30% of the revenue they still earn more than on othe…

I am on the purchasing side. Google is very efficient when delivering traffic especially their Max Performance product. Probably the cheapest of all platforms. So they are serving relevant ads to users who engage with the ads. This is win for me and I assume also a win for publishers who get revenue due to higher engagement.

Also users should benefit because they are getting relevant ads. Linear tv is notorious for non relevant ads like all the drug ads for conditions you don’t have. If you’re forced to see ads, wouldn’t you want ads that are relevant?

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