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              Congressional
           ~   Research Service






The DOJ's Ad Tech Antitrust Case Against

Google: A Brief Overview



April  27,  2023

On January 24, 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and several state attorneys general filed a civil
antitrust suit against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint
alleges that Google has monopolized several markets related to digital display advertising through a series
of mutually reinforcing exclusionary practices.
This Legal Sidebar provides a general overview of the ad tech tools at the center of the DOJ's case, the
allegations in the complaint, and some of the relevant legal doctrines. It concludes with options for
Congress.


Background: The Ad Tech Stack

The DOJ's complaint alleges that Google has monopolized several open web display advertising markets
involving the ad tech stack, a set of technological tools that connect website publishers offering
advertising inventory to prospective advertisers. The allegations focus on graphical web ads (as opposed
to search ads, video ads, and mobile app ads) and the open web (rather than websites such as Facebook
that use their own tools to sell directly to advertisers).
The technologies in the ad tech stack allocate ad space via a complex series of transactions that are
resolved nearly instantaneously while a website loads for a user. The complaint identifies three primary
components and relevant markets:
      Publisher Ad Servers - Website publishers use these tools to manage their advertising
       inventory. Publisher ad servers submit information regarding available ad space to an ad
       exchange. Publishers generally use a single ad server for administrative reasons.
      Ad  Exchanges - Ad exchanges oversee and resolve auctions for available advertising
       inventory. The exchanges receive requests from publishers via publisher ad servers and
       solicit bids from advertisers via advertiser buying tools. Both publishers and advertisers
       prefer to use multiple ad exchanges simultaneously to obtain the most favorable prices
       available.


                                                                Congressional Research Service
                                                                  https://crsreports.congress.gov
                                                                                     LSB10956

CRS Legal Sidebar
Prepared for Members and
Committees of Congress

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