UK watchdog finds Google provisionally guilty of restricting competition in online advertising – Computerworld

Self-preference limits competition

As the CMA explains, digital advertising has various intermediaries that facilitate the sale of online advertising space on websites or mobile applications between two key parties: sellers, i.e. publishers, and buyers, i.e. advertisers.

Google acts as an intermediary in three key parts of the advertising chain: it operates ad buying tools for advertisers, Google Ads and DV360; it provides an ad server for publishers, DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP); and it also operates an ad exchange, AdX, which receives bid requests from publishers and responsive bids from advertisers, and then holds an auction to connect the two parties.

The CMA’s interim findings concern Google’s anti-competitive “self-preferencing.” Since at least 2015, Google has abused its dominant position by leveraging both its purchasing tools and its publisher ad server to strengthen AdX’s market position and protect AdX from competition from other exchanges, according to the CMA.