Regulators in UK Are Raising Voices About Google’s Unfair Ad Tech Practices that Are Giving a Hard Time To Competitors

Competition regulators in the UK have objected to Google’s ad tech practices that are affecting the competition in the UK. The British Competition and Marketing authority has released a statement saying that Google has impacted the competition in the search market by advertising their own services favoring themselves. According to CMA, many marketers and publishers in the UK bid and sell to Google to advertise in the market. In 2019, these marketers and publishers gave £1.8 billion annually to use Google’s technology for advertising.

The British regulators also said that Google is misusing its dominance in the market to advertise its own services. CMA also said that Google isn’t giving a fair field to many competitors which is disadvantageous to many ad technologies. Interim executive director of enforcement at the CMA, Juliette Enser, says that through ads, many businesses and websites are keeping their platform free. They are earning millions of revenue from these ads and when these ads reach millions of people in the UK, a lot of goods and services get bought or sold out. That’s why it is important that all publishers and advertisers experience fair competition as they are keeping most of their content free.

The vice president of Google ads, Dan Taylor, says that Google completely disagrees with CMA views and will soon respond in accordance with that. Taylor wrote an email which said that Google is fair to all types of content and their advertising technology is helping millions of websites earn revenue and reach customers. Google aims to create value for advertisers and publishers in a competitive setting and all the things that have been said about Google ads are flawed.

It is worth mentioning here that this isn’t the first time that Google ads have been accused of abusing its power in ad tech. Last year, European Union regulators also charged Google with breaching antitrust rules about ad tech. They said that Google has always been dominating search and text advertising for years. This accusation on Google is being compared with Microsoft’s accusation that the company has used its market power to bring down its competitors.

CMA said that Google has used its dominant power to strengthen its ad exchange platform, AdX. Google charges the highest on AdX and it is a center for many advertisements buying and selling. Google takes about 20% of each bid that is done on AdX.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World