Why We Must Stop Google

I was head of sales for independent adtech company MediaMath until 2019, during which time the company was considered a top player in the space. 

Our tech was licensed by big brands and premier agency holding companies in major media markets globally. Though I remain proud of MediaMath’s growth, I believed it was always bounded by Google.

But I did not believe this was due to being fairly outsold. Instead, I saw how Google’s heavy-handed strategy of paying lavish rebates for the largest chunks of ad dollars won it outsized advertiser budgets, which compounded over the years. The scraps left over were for independent adtech to fight over. Many of these strategies were described by expert witnesses and in court documents during the recently wrapped antitrust trial. 

Today, of course, we marvel at Google’s glistening ad and tech product marketing, mammoth user scale, enormous sales and service teams, exclusive ad inventory, and instantly recognizable brand image. But from my tenure leading teams who sold against Google, I remember well how it built that edifice: It would buy off ad buyers in exchange for ad budgets.

Google would reward the right organizations, at the right times, in the right places, with the right packaging, and in the right amounts for first dibs on ad budgets. According to an internal memo, $445 million in rebates were paid out in 2018, securing more than $15 billion in spend commitments. The memo stated: “For 2019 we intend to deliver ~$20B in deals with $550M in incentive value,” for a cost of “~2% of total qualifying spend.”

Google’s search business was the mother of all leverage, and over the years, Google was able to expand this leverage to include its ad server and YouTube.

Indeed, to attract bigger display and video budgets, Google used those products in order to, per a document it filed in court, “drive non-search growth with a focus on YT and [Google’s ad] Network.” Agencies would then spend those display and video budgets disproportionately on Google’s own properties or networks, regardless of campaign performance, which represented far richer margins for the company than spending on third-party publishers.