• by Laurie Sullivan , April 18, 2025

Publishers in the advertising industry want to restore balance and transparency across the market, and believe the outcome of Google’s monopoly trial will give many companies a new beginning in ad technology.

Andrew Casale, president and CEO at Index Exchange, described testifying in the Department of Justice hearing against Google as a “horror,” but felt proud to stand alongside those advocating for a fairer digital ad ecosystem.

“The cross-examination received by Google’s lawyers was very intimidating,” he said, adding that he had received a subpoena by the Department of Justice to testify at the trial. “The stakes were high. You walk into a Federal courthouse with media inside. There are multiple courtrooms and you’re on the stand.”

From someone who speaks at a lot of technology events, he said, “that’s just a level of public speaking I have never experienced. And that was just the beginning."

When the cross-examination started and Google’s lawyers started throwing out ambiguous questions that could be answered in the affirmative or negative, it became more intense.

“One question is intense, but when it happens in succession dozens of times it’s like “nothing I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

Casale experienced Google’s ad-server feature where its ad exchange took a “last look” at the bids, allowing Google to bid even one penny higher to secure the business at ad-placement auctions. Google created the technology to counter the growing popularity of header bidding, where publishers could bid directly with multiple ad exchanges.

As of 2017, that advantage vanished. “We needed some help from above to make the market more fair, competitive and transparent,” he said. “The lingering concern is if Google was permitted to build and operate that product, what else could it build and do tomorrow. That’s why this is a very important trial and verdict.”

Imagine that with an impression opportunity from a publisher and three exchanges place their best bid, but Google AdX was the only company that could see the bid and decide if it wanted to submit a higher bid. That’s only one example, Casale said. There were many more that came out during the trial.

In the short term nothing changes, said Casale, but remedies will provide more insight in the days to come.

"One way to better the industry is to make ad tech less expensive," he said. "Operate in a lower margin in a more cost-effective method. The challenge is the time frames, but if we start to see a growing precedent and there are more actions and regulatory actions, we might see more oversight by the tech companies to settle cases like these."

Some in the industry called the Google ruling a “good day for publishers, while others are concerned about friction across the ad-tech stack in the short term as the industry fragments before it rebalances, but many new companies will have the opportunity to build a trusted alliance from the ground up.

Rebalancing of power and the need for more transparency is how many publishers described Judge Brinkema’s decision.

“We see this as a shift toward more balanced infrastructure that supports privacy, broadens market access, and improves the overall foundation of digital advertising," Marc Fanelli, senior vice president of global digital audiences and operations at Dun & Bradstreet, stated in an email to MediaPost.

Kevin Pike, a cybersecurity expert, called the ruling in a post on LinkedIn ad-tech’s “Ma Bell moment, the true inflection point won’t be the breakup itself,” but rather “the point when the infrastructure is inherited, and whether those who've acquired it rebuild with better incentives or just replicate the old ones at a smaller scale.”