Unsealed Ruling Puts Google’s Ad Tech Under Six Years of Oversight, No AdX Sale

Google will keep its AdX ad exchange, but it must open its ad auctions to rivals and accept six years of outside oversight, according to Judge Leonie Brinkema’s full remedies opinion in the U.S. government’s ad tech case, unsealed Wednesday.

Brinkema ruled on Sept. 2 that Google would not have to sell AdX, and gave both sides two weeks to request redactions. In the 106-page decision, she wrote that the remedies will be “sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google’s unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets,” The Next Web reported.

What changes for publishers

The order breaks the tie between Google’s two main publisher tools. Sites using its DFP ad server, now part of Google Ad Manager, will no longer have to use AdX, and AdX must bid into rival publisher ad servers on the same terms it offers DFP, according to AdExchanger. Google also has to connect AdX and DFP to Prebid, the open-source header-bidding framework, share real-time data on winning and losing bids with publishers, and publish documentation explaining how DFP picks auction winners.

Brinkema turned down a demand to open-source DFP’s auction code. She also rejected Google’s argument that the rules should apply only in the U.S. “For Google, a worldwide application of the final judgment would entail product changes that are consistent across all regions,” she wrote. AdExchanger reported the requirements take effect within 60 days.

Six years, with a monitor

The remedies run six years, the term Google proposed, rather than the 15 years the Justice Department and states sought, and the court can extend them if the judgment falls short. Reports differ on the oversight structure: Reuters said Google should appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, while AdExchanger described a court-appointed technical monitor with full access to Google’s staff, systems and source code.

The opinion shows the judge’s caution about compliance. Brinkema referred to a “lack of trust that Google will comply with an order from this court,” Courthouse News reported, even as she chose behavioral remedies over a breakup of the exchange where publishers pay a 20% fee. Barry Lynn of the Open Markets Institute criticized the choice, and in Europe the Commission has argued that only a breakup would fix Google’s ad tech business.