Google and Facebook execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves
theregister.com
theregister.com
I looked up "header bidding" [1][2] and basically it seems to be a way for sellers to auction their space to all potential buyers at once, rather than letting Google be the middle-man and rig the game in its favor... for example, by reserving the last bid in an auction for Google Ad Exchange.
No wonder Google is against it.
[1] https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/
[2] https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-le...
Can they make up the difference in not getting ripped off by Google?
The downside of this for websites is more middlemen extracting away value - but it’s usually still a net gain, otherwise publishers just wouldn’t use header bidding.
(I’ve worked in several large media companies and have implemented header bidding solutions for them in the past)
Google, for its part, has been perfectly happy to remove publications from Google News at their request. Or leave entire countries.
It isn't just dominance. I certainly don't love advertisers, but this is illegal monopolistic price setting. This should be ample evidence for the DOJ to sternly penalize (or break up) Google and Facebook.
Google controls too much surface area on the web and mobile, and they're using it in harmful ways. They've been caught colluding, price setting, and wage fixing on multiple occasions. They're using their disproportionate power to alter the entire market to fit their needs.
How is this any different from Ma Bell? And given the pervasiveness of technology now versus back then, how is it not worse?
Just because Google is against something doesn't mean that it is good for us as consumers.
This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022.
"On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail."
...
"The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision."
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
The local newspaper's version of the story was nice enough to name Sundar Pichai by name.
It also included a poor response from Google which was along the lines of, "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." Which is exactly the opposite of what the newly revised documents show.
It's also very telling when a company's PR department pivots from protecting the company to protecting an individual at that company.
That’s exactly the point why he needs to sign to get his written approval. Defending him that we didn’t tell him everything would be pretty concerning.
You don't know? It's your job to know.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/p...
Assuming the same was done in reverse, this is both companies reducing the pool of ad slots available to others, and pushing up the price.
It would be equivalent to one oil company giving lots of oil to a competitor to destroy, and that competitor doing the same in return.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
As the owner of an e-commerce business dependent on online advertising I fear it will be small business that are most adversely affected by the coming changes.
As a side note, this is a problem with ads as a business: since the morality of the very practice is dubious, the companies that sell them aren't expected to behave ethically.
Really? What's "dubious" about selling attention for money and/or physical goods? The practice is older than money itself.
The current social contract where advertising is clearly marked as out-of-stream information is a very good thing. Because the alternative is all advertising is "native", meaning lies and deception.
The only unethical part of the landscape is the fact that Google (et al.) disrupted the traditional advertising markets and managed to avoid having to comply to existing legislation.
Advertising is a more specific thing: an implicit social contract where demands on your attention are rewarded with non-monetary bonuses.
As such it's a good thing, because a world with no social contract or rewards would be shittier.
There's no social contract - a company shows ads and gets money, so they do it.
Do you really think customers are happy when an ad interrupts their favorite TV show? The answer is no fucking way. You've worked in the business for 17 years so it may cost you to believe it, but it's obvious to everyone else.
This is probably not what you really want.
The large-scale spying doesn't come from advertiser or agency demands. That's a thing that the large digital monopolies invented to give themselves even more social leverage.
(Source - Over 17 years of experience in the digital advertising space.)
It's a serious question, because I probably wouldn't block ads if they were passive images that just existed on a page.
Yes, because that's exactly how TV advertising works, and ad agencies view TV advertising as much more effective than digital.
> If so, why is that business model so rare?
For this model to work, you need somebody to do the statistical real-world sampling for you, using surveys, experiments and all of the rest of the classical sociology tools.
Companies like Google and Facebook are very much against this because it shifts the balance of market power away from data collection (Google's strong suit) to neural third parties that do meatspace data science and data interpretation.
I'm curious about this because you're the first person in advertising I've talked to whose not all about microtargeted ads.
Isn't proof that these players are abusing their market power? Short trial?
I think this is slightly different, in that the Google-Facebook pact seems to have had a specific focused purpose.
Again, this is not news.Besides actual leaks we've had tv shows/movies depicting this phenomenon for at least a decade, and usually mainstream pictures hit the screen when it's already obvious that something was partially true.
12 years ago [1] this law was invoked against big tech companies, who entered no-poach agreements to reduce inter-big-tech-co hiring competition, with the side effect of wage suppression.
Anti-competitive collusion is illegal, full-stop. Proving anti-competitive conspiracy without an explicit paper trail is hard. The emails in the article are pretty explicit. Should be interesting!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
This is not an argument or a talking point against immigration, or importing workforce, what I'm saying is that by doing this and (at least) not reforming companies(or better: shut them down), you effectively empower these corporations to be even less-principled and the pressure from employers becomes smaller.Now theoretically this can be curbed by the government, but there are a few problems here: you cannot do this and think you can remain competitive as a global power;such policies are very unpopular in US;FAANG companies can easily lobby and overthrown this(they already probably did and do this) policy;
So the solution imo has to be a bottom->up one: pressuring the company internally, though this rarely works in practice.Google has become more transparent (even if a facade) in the latest years towards the average user.But at the same time it has engaged in shady projects for the military that are very concerning,so who knows what's going on.
There's a lot of pieces involved here, and I wish the political divisions in this country didn't stop people from actually researching the case and forming their own opinion. The outcome of this case will have massive effects and could bring about a lot of changes (both good and bad).
House Democrats were unable to find Republicans to support a recent antitrust investigation's recommendations[1].
Prominent Democrats have been pushing reinvigorating antitrust legislation for years[2], in fact.
The only partisan issue is whether the govt can or should compel social media platforms to carry speech that they don't want to carry, which is a violation of the First Amendment[3] and something Republicans support.
1. https://www.protocol.com/critics-say-what-house-democrats-go...
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/breaking-from-tech-...
3. https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-florida-cant-regulate-online-...