Former Facebook Ad Executive Reveals Google Ad Market Insider Information, Adding Another Witness to Antitrust Investigation!

According to the financial news app Zhitong Finance, in the antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Google (GOOGL.US), testimony from a former high-ranking Facebook advertising executive revealed a secret agreement between Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook's parent company) and Google. The executive, Brian Boland, who served as Facebook's advertising technology director from 2009 to 2019, disclosed to a federal court in Virginia that Facebook initially tried to challenge Google's dominant position in the display advertising market but ultimately found it difficult to compete due to Google's monopolistic position in the market.

Facebook's Audience Network project aimed to allow advertisers to not only place ads on Facebook and Instagram but also to buy ad space on other websites and apps. However, by 2017, Facebook realized that due to the advantages Google gave itself in its advertising tools, it was difficult for Facebook to compete effectively with Google. A 2017 strategic memo pointed out that Google's strategy was like setting up a barrier between advertisers and Facebook, allowing Google to prioritize the best ad resources.

Boland explained to Judge Leonie Brinkema that Facebook was concerned that this barrier would affect its advertising business. Judge Brinkema will rule on the Department of Justice's accusation against Google for illegally monopolizing the advertising technology market. Google's ad trading platform allows it to conduct a "last look" after the ad auction ends to decide whether to purchase ad space.

Boland likened Google's technological advantage to being able to pick the best 30 apples from a box of apples before anyone else buys them, leaving other participants to choose from the remaining apples.

Under Boland's supervision, Facebook negotiated with Google for six months and eventually reached an agreement in 2018 known internally as "Project Jedi Blue." This agreement gave Facebook preferential treatment when bidding for ads within its Audience Network through Google's trading platform. The agreement was approved by the top executives of both companies, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Although Google and Facebook are respectively the first and second largest participants in the online advertising market, the details of this deal known as the "Network Bidding Agreement" were not disclosed in court testimony. However, court documents show that Google wanted Facebook to pay 15% of media costs in exchange for giving up the advantage of the "last look."

In 2020, a group of state attorneys general sued Google, accusing it of monopolizing the advertising technology market and pointing out that the agreement between the two companies violated antitrust laws. They claimed that Google proposed this deal in exchange for Facebook abandoning a new technology called "header bidding," which could weaken Google's market position. However, a judge in New York dismissed these accusations, finding no impropriety in the agreement reached by the two companies The European antitrust enforcement agency also investigated the deal and concluded the investigation in March 2022 without taking any action. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice did not accuse the agreement of being anti-competitive when suing Google for monopolizing the advertising technology market. Instead, it emphasized that even tech giants like Meta cannot compete with it.

Boerland left Facebook in 2020, expressing internal concerns about Facebook's lack of growth in display advertising. Eventually, the project stopped buying display ads online and shifted its focus entirely to mobile ads.

In addition to Boerland, several executives testified in Google's antitrust investigation. Among them, former News Corp executive Stephanie Layser pointed out that in 2017, News Corp estimated that if they stopped cooperating with Google's ad agency and no longer adhered to Google's restrictions, News Corp would lose at least $9 million in ad revenue that year.

She believed that Google's ad business benefited more but harmed the interests of publishers. Almost no one in the industry uses other products because Google's publisher ad server is tied to Google's ad exchange platform.

Layser emphasized that by the time she left, about 70-80% of News Corp's ad transactions were done through Google's ad platform. However, Google argued that this data is outdated, and large publishers now have about six different platforms to sell ads, with over 80 related services.

Tim Wolfe, an advertising executive at Gannett, the largest newspaper group in the United States, also testified, stating that Gannett has been using Google ad servers for about 13 years and has never found any other viable alternative.

In addition to executives from Gannett and News Corp, employees from several companies such as Trade Desk, Comcast, and PubMatic are on the list of potential witnesses, as well as over twenty current or former Google employees waiting to be "summoned."

The U.S. Department of Justice is trying to prove that Google is illegally monopolizing the advertising technology field, preventing publishers and advertisers from using other tools, and unfairly undercutting bids from its competitors