Teads Sues Google, Cites 6.88T Ad Impressions Loss 08/04/2026

Teads Holding filed a lawsuit against Google LLC and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., in the Southern District of New York on August 3, 2026, seeking treble damages and injunctive relief over conduct that a Virginia federal court has already ruled unlawful.

The company filed the lawsuit to recover financial damages caused to its business, Teads CEO David Kostman wrote in a prepared statement, adding that the outcome also should restore a transparent, competitive marketplace for publishers and advertisers.

“For years Google used its dominance to suppress fair competition and distort the digital ad tech ecosystem to its own advantage,’ he wrote.

It alleges that the company illegally forced its advertisers to use its own exchange, AdX, by blocking access to Google Ads buyers.

The complaint also quantifies this by showing an analysis that claims the anticompetitive tie caused Teads to lose approximately 6.88 trillion ad impressions between 2017 and 2023 to rivals.

The lawsuit follows the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia’s ruling in April 2025, that Google had engaged in unlawful anticompetitive practices with respect to certain digital ad-tech markets.

Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia found that Google monopolized the publisher ad-server and ad-exchange markets for open-web display advertising and unlawfully tied the two together.

Teads said in the lawsuit that a meaningful portion of its revenue is generated through transactions that involve Google’s advertising technology, and the Google Lawsuit presents several risks to its business, including the potential for retaliatory actions by Google.

Teads has a long history of working with Google. The company partnered with Google TV to expand its connected TV (CTV) HomeScreen ad inventory. This partnership, announced in February, gave brands access to what Teads called "high-attention placements" on CTV, appearing as the first visual impression on Google TV devices across major global markets, including the U.S. and the U.K.

With the Google TV Masthead, advertisers gained access to a large audience in a premium viewing environment.

Google TV brings together more than 400,000 movies, shows, and more from across 10,000 apps with personalized profiles and recommendations. The goal was to make content discovery more intuitive.

Between 2017 and 2018, Teads implemented Google BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, and Cloud Storage.

Through these integrations, Teads processed more than 30 billion daily ad-related streaming events and then later scaled to 100 billion while flattening its operational infrastructure costs, according to the company.

The initial collaboration focused on data engineering and infrastructure, and the relationship evolved into multimillion-dollar ad-tech integrations and consumer product expansions -- and now, complex legal challenges such as the lawsuit announced Monday.