Google dominates Australian adtech industry: ACCC

The ACCC has published its interim report into Google’s dominance of the Australian adtech industry and the competition issues that poses.

The interim report into the ACCC’s digital advertising services inquiry found that Google captures 50–60% and 90–100% of the market depending on the service.

Google is also the only provider across the full Australian adtech supply chain that also sells ad inventory, and over time has made a series of acquisitions that has cemented its dominance of this supply chain, according to ACCC Chair Rod Sims.

“There is a real lack of competition, choice and transparency in this industry. These issues add to the cost of advertising for businesses, which will ultimately impact the prices paid by consumers,” he said.

“Google’s significant presence across the whole adtech supply chain, combined with its significant data advantage, means Google is likely to have the ability and the incentive to preference its own adtech businesses in ways that affect competition.”

He said that during the inquiry competitors, ad buyers and other stakeholders have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest from Google’s various roles in the industry.

“This includes Google very often acting on behalf of both publishers and advertisers for the same ad sale across the adtech supply chain, while also selling its own ad inventory,” he said.

For example, Google does not participate in header bidding auctions run by publishers, in which they offer ad inventory for sale to advertisers in a real-time bidding process. Instead, the company forces publishers to use Google’s own proprietary Open Bidding auctions. Stakeholders also expressed concerns over Google restricting rivals’ access to certain data; for example, by blocking access to the DoubleClick ID.

The interim report makes a series of recommendations aimed at curbing Google’s control over the market, such as new rules to prevent self-preferencing in the supply of adtech services.

Recommendations also include proposals to enhance the ability of adtech providers to assess the price and quality of service, and potentially requiring companies with a significant data advantage to provide consumers with an easy way to port their data between rival providers.

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