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Google has been accused of unfairly monopolizing the digital advertising market resulting in a significant drop in advertising revenue for publishers.
Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, is suing the search engine for using “deceptive commercial practices” and breaching U.S. antitrust and consumer protection laws.
Why we care: This is the latest in a string of lawsuits in which Google has been accused of violating antitrust laws. The outcome of these cases could force the search engine to implement big changes such as the divestment of its ad business, which could potentially lead to increased transparency, more campaign control for advertisers and better innovation – which could also possibly mean the creation of new ad tools.
What’s happening? Gannett filed a federal lawsuit against Google in New York today. In a statement, the company said:
“Google controls 90% of the market for publisher ad servers, which publishers use to offer ad space for sale. Google also controls over 60% of the market for ad exchanges, which run auctions among advertisers bidding for ad space on publishers’ websites.”
Publishers rely heavily on digital ad revenue in order to survive – and Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.
Read more here: https://searchengineland.com/google-sued-gannet-ad-spend-428411