Next in Media

Ad Tech Forrest Gump Ari Paparo on his New Book, and Whether the Feds Should Have Nailed Google Sooner

Episode Summary

Next in Media spoke with Marketecture CEO Ari Paparo, author of the new book "Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance" about how Google was able to build a monopoly on programmatic ads, despite so many people in the ad industry shouting about it for years - and whether we can stop the next one.

Episode Notes

Next in Media spoke with Marketecture CEO Ari Paparo, author of the new book "Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance" about how Google was able to build a monopoly on programmatic ads, despite so many people in the ad industry shouting about it for years - and whether we can stop the next one.

💡Takeaways:

• 🏛️ The initial small scale of programmatic advertising in the early 2000s made it difficult for regulators to foresee its future dominance, allowing Google's DoubleClick acquisition to proceed with less scrutiny than it might warrant today.
• ⚔️ Google's ownership of the ad server provided a significant competitive advantage, enabling it to "snipe" bids and secure ad inventory by having insight into auction prices.
• 🔍 Regulators initially overlooked the critical advantage of Google's ad server being connected to its exchange, a factor that proved more significant than simply a company selling ads also owning a marketplace.
• 🤫 Google's acquisition of Invite Media (which became DV360) for a relatively low price (around $80 million) reportedly allowed it to avoid significant antitrust scrutiny, highlighting a potential loophole in regulatory oversight based on transaction size.
• ⚖️ The lack of specific regulations governing advertising market transactions, unlike financial markets, meant that the ad industry operated largely on "best behavior and contract law," creating vulnerabilities for anti-competitive practices.
• 🗣️ Publisher dissatisfaction with Google's actions, such as removing features like UPR, played a significant role in fueling antitrust scrutiny and demonstrating the company's "total arrogance".
• 🌍 Unlike the US, the Digital Markets Act in Europe provides regulators with tools to intervene based on a company's scale of power, offering a potential model for preventing future monopolies in the digital advertising space.

🎙 Guest: Ari Paparo

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: Elemental TV

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative