The National Association of Broadcasters says it is monitoring a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday accusing Alphabet’s Google of monopolizing digital advertising technologies.
In a statement sent to Radio Ink, NAB Senior Communications Strategist Alex Siciliano said the trade industry and its represented broadcasters have complained for years about Google’s purported anticompetitive practices and its outsized influence on the digital ad market.
“NAB is paying close attention to the latest lawsuit filed against Google and is carefully reviewing the complaint,” Siciliano said on Tuesday. “For years, broadcasters have been sounding the alarm over the anticompetitive practices of the Big Tech platforms, including Google. Their dominant role in the marketplace has come at a steep price for local news broadcasters, who lose an estimated $2 billion annually by providing their content to these platforms under take it or leave it terms.”
Siciliano said the group will continue working with federal lawmakers “to address these inequities, and [we] urge Congress to move swiftly to level the playing field.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the federal law enforcement agency and joined by attorneys general from eight states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
The complaint claims Google has abused its market dominance in the advertising space for at least 15 years in a matter that essentially forces digital publishers and other content creators to use its products. The terms often discourage publishers from using competing products in the marketplace.
“Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” Merrick Garland, the U.S. Attorney General, said in a statement. “No matter the industry and no matter the company, the Justice Department will vigorously enforce our antitrust laws to protect consumers, safeguard competition, and ensure economic fairness and opportunity for all.”
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson for Google said the lawsuit was an attempt to “pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector,” and accused DOJ officials of “doubling down on a flawed argument that [will] slow innovation, raise advertising fees and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”
It is the second antitrust lawsuit filed by federal officials against Google over the last several years. In 2020, the DOJ sued Google on similar grounds over its search engine business. Google moved to dismiss that lawsuit earlier this month.
Google only represents a 29% share of the total digital marketing dollars. How is that a monopoly??? It isn’t. The Federal Government just doesn’t want any entity, including Google, to be bigger than the Federal government. This is about politics and Federal government control. And who has a bigger monopoly than the Federal Government???? No one!
But “digital marketing dollars” is broad, and encompasses connected TV, social media, online retail marketing, etc. Google dominates with search and display advertising — well above 29 percent — and the lawsuit alleges it uses its outsized dominance and influence in that space to harm competitors.
Web publishing is part of the broader “digital marketing” picture, and in that area, Google dominates to the detriment of upstart ad tech firms who can’t compete. It not only owns the ad publishing technology, it also owns the leading ad auction marketplace, and it owns the top search engine that uses, you guessed it, Google digital ads.
Ok. So Google has built good businesses. Does that mean the Federal Government has a right to tear them down?
What if a radio station group was hyper-successful in a market, and controlled 60 percent or more of the market dollars? Would you feel the government should tear them down?
The Federal Government is the entity that should be dramatically reduced in size. Not successful businesses like Google.