Adtech company OpenX sues Google
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
> The adtech company alleges that Google disallowed publishers from setting price floors that would incentivize the use of rival ad exchanges—even when publishers wanted to.
> Google also required publishers to use its ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers, as a means of revenue generation for its ad exchange while restricting access to its AdWords platform (now Google Ads) exclusively through its ad exchange, the lawsuit claims.
> OpenX also alleges that Google’s ad exchange impeded rival exchanges’ ability to win transactions by manipulating prices in digital ad auctions in response to competitors’ bids.
> “They really rigged digital advertising auctions to the disadvantage of all their competitors,” OpenX CEO John Gentry told ADWEEK. “The classic example is, because they controlled the auctions at the ad server level, they modified the auctions such that they could see all the bids that came in and then decide to modify the Google bid after the fact, which allowed them to win a far larger number of transactions than any of the competitors because the auction was simply not a fair auction.”