Publishers are ‘forced’ to use Google’s advertising products, Mail expert tells landmark trial

Publishers are effectively being forced to use Google’s advertising products, a senior publishing executive has said in a landmark lawsuit accusing the tech giant of operating a monopoly.

Matthew Wheatland, chief digital officer at dailymail.com, was called by the US Department of Justice as the sole witness to rebut Google’s case at the end of a 15-day trial.

Government lawyers accuse Google of monopolizing display advertising on websites and depriving the publishing industry, including news websites, of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

The judge, Leonie Brinkema, could ultimately rule that Google is operating a monopoly and force the company to sell part of its advertising business.

Billions of ads on web pages are bought and sold every day through “programmatic display advertising,” a process that involves automated auctions that take milliseconds to complete.

Judge Leonie Brinkema weighs in on the lawsuit that could ultimately rule Google has a monopoly and force it to sell off some of its advertising business

Google owns the largest ad server used by publishers to sell ads, known as DFP, and the largest tool advertisers use to buy them, known as Google Ads.

It also operates the largest exchange where the auctions are held, namely AdX.

Combined, these tech tools keep 36 cents of every advertising dollar that passes through them, government lawyers claim.

In this case, Google has argued that it faces competition from Facebook, TikTok and others, and that advertisers are shifting their spend away from websites and using it instead in other areas, including apps and social media.

Mr Wheatland was asked by prosecutor Julia Wood whether advertisers moving to social media “will have an impact on your negotiations with Google as an advertising technology user.”

He said, ‘That’s not really true. If advertisers change where they spend their ad spend, that in itself doesn’t help the publisher. You can’t shift those open web impressions to another medium.”

Mr Wheatland was also asked what he thought of a suggestion made in the trial that publishers “work harder” to sell more ads directly to advertisers, rather than relying on programmatic sales.

He said: “We are working hard to sell direct impressions already. We try to sell as much as possible to direct customers. It’s hard to sell directly. The costs of doing business with direct sales are high. You need all the support staff, the sales staff, the creative staff, the marketing staff, and you need to generate post-market reports.

“In general, direct selling is not how the majority of ad sales happen on the open Internet.”

Attorneys Karen Dunn and Jeannie Rhee, both representatives of Google, arrive at the antitrust court in Alexandria, Virginia

Mr Wheatland was then asked if he was aware of a trend towards advertisers spending more on apps, and whether the Daily Mail has an app.

He said the publisher had made a “significant investment” in its app.

Separate apps were needed for different operating systems and support staff was also needed, he said. Mr Wheatland added that there was a tendency to get higher prices for internet advertising than for apps.

He said: “Maybe 2 percent of our readership comes to us through the app,” adding: “It’s not possible to move all of our readership from web to app.”

Both the DOJ and Google have completed their evidence and closing arguments will be presented in late November.