Tag: advertising

Google to Appeal Ruling in Advertising Technology Case

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 20:10:36 +0000

Google reportedly said Friday (April 18) that it will appeal a judge’s ruling announced Thursday (April 17) that the company holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology.

The company said the judge delivered a “mixed decision” in which she said the Justice Department failed to show that Google’s advertising tools or acquisitions of DoubleClick and AdMeld were anticompetitive but also said Google’s publisher tools exclude rivals, thereby violating antitrust laws, Reuters reported Friday.

Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a statement provided to PYMNTS Thursday that the company would appeal the half of the case that it did not win.

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Mulholland said in the statement. “The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

In the decision announced Thursday, Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google had violated the law to establish its dominance in the online advertising system.

The Department of Justice and a group of states had sued the company, claiming that its monopoly in advertising technology (AdTech) helped Google charge higher prices and take a larger portion of each sale.

Google at trial had offered up expert testimony that regulators ignored the wider scope of competition faced by Google.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema said, while also dismissing one portion of the government’s case.

The Department of Justice said in a Thursday press release that the court held that Google violated antitrust law by monopolizing open-web digital advertising markets.

“This is a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the release. “This Department of Justice will continue taking bold legal action to protect the American people from encroachments on free speech and free markets by tech companies.”

The post Google to Appeal Ruling in Advertising Technology Case appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

This Week in AI: Tariffs Hit AI, Tech Giants’ Antitrust Woes and a More Adept ChatGPT

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:26:17 +0000

It’s a big week for artificial intelligence news. AI hardware is being dinged by tariff troubles while two juggernauts in the AI field — Meta and Google — are in the crosshairs of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, OpenAI unveiled a more capable and smarter ChatGPT and revealed plans for an AI software engineer.

Tariff Uncertainty Hits AI Hardware

The President Donald Trump administration’s unpredictable tariff policy is creating long-term uncertainty for the AI industry.

The tariffs don’t target digital services and intellectual property like AI software. AI pioneer Andrew Ng said intellectual property is hard to tax due to its intangible nature and ease of cross-border transfer. A Morgan Stanley note said major software firms like Adobe and Salesforce have not yet seen demand impacts.

However, AI models require powerful hardware to function — and that’s where tariffs may bite.

Although chips are exempted, tariffs on essential infrastructure like servers, cooling systems and networking gear could disrupt AI development. Ng said bringing computer equipment manufacturing back to the United States isn’t feasible due to a lack of domestic expertise and supply chain capacity.

Meta’s Anticompetition Trial Begins

The Federal Trade Commission’s 2020 anticompetition lawsuit against Meta went to trial this week, with the U.S. government seeking a divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp, among other remedies.

The FTC sued Meta (formerly Facebook) for allegedly engaging in “anticompetitive conduct” to weaken or squash rivals as it protects its “monopoly” in social media, according to the revised complaint.

But Meta Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a blog post that the FTC’s “weak antitrust lawsuit … ignores how the market actually works and chases a theory that doesn’t hold up in the real world.”

In today’s digital landscape, Meta competes with TikTok, YouTube and X for eyeballs and engagement.

“In reality, more time is spent on TikTok and YouTube than on either Facebook or Instagram,” Newstead said in the post.

Court Rules That Google Broke Law to Dominate in Ads

A Virginia district court judge ruled that Google broke the law to dominate the online advertising technology market, one of two major antitrust lawsuits brought by the U.S. government against the search giant.

The government sued Google for having a monopoly in three parts of the online ad market: online publishers’ tools; advertiser tools; and software that makes this market work.

While it is not illegal to dominate a market by innovating, Google entrenched its monopolies and tied them together, a classic antitrust violation, experts told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, a D.C. judge ruled last year in a separate case that Google holds an online search monopoly. The judge is considering a request by the Department of Justice to force Google to sell Chrome, the world’s dominant browser. A ruling is expected by August.

ChatGPT to Become Smarter, All-Around AI Agent

OpenAI unveiled two new AI models in its reasoning model family that will power ChatGPT: o3 and o4-mini.

The AI startup said these are its smartest models to date. They can use all the tools at ChatGPT’s disposal and even incorporate images into their thinking. This would be helpful for businesses looking to analyze PDFs and faxes. OpenAI said the models can even read blurry or upside-down images.

OpenAI said for most real-world uses, o3 and o4-mini will be cheaper than o1 and o3-mini while outperforming them on tasks.

The models are now available for ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team users. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users will get them in a week. Free users can try o4-mini by selecting “Think” before entering a prompt.

OpenAI Developing AI Software Engineer

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said the company is building an AI agent that can do all the work of software engineers, not just augment their skills.

“This is not just augmenting the current software engineers in your workforce … it’s literally an agentic software engineer that can build an app for you,” Friar said at Goldman Sachs’ Disruptive Technology Symposium in London.

“Not only does it build it, it does all the things that software engineers hate to do,” such as quality assurance tests, bug testing and bashing, as well as the accompanying documentation, she said. “So suddenly, you can force multiply your software engineering workforce.”

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

The post This Week in AI: Tariffs Hit AI, Tech Giants’ Antitrust Woes and a More Adept ChatGPT appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Rangers FC showcases TeamTalk support initiative, funded by FDJ United

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:05:22 +0000

Rangers Football Club showcased its TeamTalk initiative ahead of the crucial Europa League quarter-final clash against Athletic Club in Bilbao, Spain.

The mental health programme is funded by Rangers’ primary sponsor to bring fans together to promote discussion and physical activity. In particular, TeamTalk aims to break the stigma that prevents men from opening up and sharing problems.

Rangers FC, the 55-time Scottish soccer champions, have had a long-running partnership with the Kindred Group since 2014, but the Swedish-formed betting brand has recently been acquired by France’s FDJ United.

FDJ brands Unibet and 32Red usually adorn the front of Rangers players’ kits, but in European countries where gambling advertising is banned, the betting logos are replaced with TeamTalk branding.

That was the case on Thursday evening in the Basque region of northern Spain as Rangers were defeated 2-0 by Athletic Club, who will now play Manchester United in the semi-final, with the Europa League final to be played at Athletic’s San Mames home stadium.

John Joyce, Rangers Charity Foundation Coach, said, “I would say to any man who is feeling as if they’re on their own: get yourself involved with TeamTalk programme.”

“There is still a stigma attached to men talking about what problems they may have, but we see that lifting when they become involved with the project.”

“It’s a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for men. All while using football and Rangers as a familiar hook.”

published a technical report on its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, weeks after its launch, but experts say the report lacks key safety details, making it difficult to assess the model’s risks.

The report is part of Google’s effort to provide transparency about its AI models, but it differs from its rivals in that it only publishes technical reports for models it considers to have moved beyond the experimental stage. Google also reserves some safety evaluation findings for a separate audit.

Experts, including Peter Wildeford, co-founder of the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, and Thomas Woodside, co-founder of the Secure AI Project, expressed disappointment with the report’s sparsity, noting that it doesn’t mention Google’s Frontier Safety Framework (FSF), introduced last year to identify potential AI risks.

Wildeford said the report’s minimal information, released weeks after the model’s public launch, makes it impossible to verify Google’s public commitments to safety and security. Woodside also questioned Google’s commitment to timely safety evaluations, pointing out that the company’s last report on dangerous capability tests was in June 2024, for a model announced in February 2024.

Moreover, Google hasn’t released a report for Gemini 2.5 Flash, a smaller model announced last week, although a spokesperson said one is “coming soon.” Thomas Woodside hopes this indicates Google will start publishing more frequent updates, including evaluations for models not yet publicly deployed.

Judge rules Google holds illegal advertising monopoly

Other AI labs, such as Meta and OpenAI, have also faced criticism for lacking transparency in their safety evaluations. Kevin Bankston, a senior adviser on AI governance at the Center for Democracy and Technology, described the trend of sporadic and vague reports as a “race to the bottom” on AI safety.

Google has stated that it conducts safety testing and “adversarial red teaming” for its models before release, even if not detailed in its technical reports.

Featured image credit

Judge rules Google holds illegal advertising monopoly

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:51:10 +0000

A US judge has ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in online advertising technology, a decision that follows a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice and 17 US states.

The lawsuit argued that Google was dominating the technology that determines which ads are placed online and where, and US District Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed, stating that Google had “wilfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts” to acquire and maintain its monopoly power.

Judge Brinkema said this exclusionary conduct harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and ultimately consumers of information on the open web. Google lost on two counts, while a third was dismissed.

Google said it would appeal the decision, with its head of regulatory affairs Lee-Ann Mulholland stating that publishers choose Google because its ad tech tools are simple, affordable, and effective. She added that the court found Google’s advertiser tools and acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, do not harm competition.

The ruling is seen as a significant win for US antitrust enforcers, with Laura Phillips-Sawyer, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, saying it signals that agencies are willing to prosecute and judges are willing to enforce the law against big tech firms.

Experts say the verdict sets an important legal precedent and is likely to affect decision-making in corporate America. Jason Kint, head of Digital Content Next, a trade association representing online publishers, stated that Google has used its market power to self-preference its own products, stifling innovation and depriving premium publishers of critical revenue.

Is Google an illegal monopoly?

The case will now move to a second “remedies” phase, which could lead to structural changes in Google’s ad exchange practices and potentially even the breakup of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Some key points from the case include:

Google’s ad tech dominance: Google owns large companies on the buyer and seller sides of the online advertising market, as well as an ad exchange that matches demand and supply.
Impact on internet users: Internet users are unlikely to notice a difference online as a result of the decision, but it affects the division of monies between advertisers, publishers, and ad service providers.
Potential consequences: The US government argues that Google and Alphabet should be broken up, which could include selling off parts of the company such as the Chrome browser.

The UK’s competition watchdog has also provisionally found Google to be using anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology.

Featured image credit

Meta nearly launched ad-free Facebook in 2018

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:33:35 +0000

Meta’s board of directors considered introducing ad-free Facebook subscriptions in response to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, according to a slide obtained by The Verge presented during the FTC v. Meta trial. The proposal was part of the company’s efforts to address the backlash over its data handling practices.

The suggested “Paid monthly subscription offering” aimed to allow users to access Facebook without ads, directly tackling the notion that users are the product when they don’t pay for a service. The goal was to provide an advertising ‘opt out’ and change the narrative around Meta’s data-driven business model.

Instead of implementing the subscription, Meta focused on reducing the amount of data available to outside developers. However, the company did eventually launch an ad-free subscription option in the European Union in 2023. The “pay or consent” model has faced criticism from regulators, prompting Meta to cut the subscription price by 40 percent last November.

Featured image credit

How Hyundai’s CMO is navigating upfront marketplace uncertainty and rapid-response tariff ads

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 04:01:00 +0000

Tasked with steering their brands down a winding and slippery road, automotive marketers are prioritizing flexibility and speed. To capture consumers buying cars ahead of an anticipated price hit from tariffs, Hyundai has launched a campaign pledging to hold sticker prices steady until June.

The campaign was assembled just a week before its April 11 debut, highlighting the agility required of marketers in this sector right now. Currently, automotive manufacturers are preparing to weather a 25% tariff on imported cars — though President Trump is reportedly considering another stay of execution, adding further uncertainty to an already unpredictable spring. Per MediaRadar, the sector accounted for $14.3 billion of U.S. ad spend last year and according to Statista, Hyundai alone invested over $600 million in advertising in 2023.

The ad itself is a 30-second spot highlighting a pledge to hold its recommended retail price steady until the beginning of June, and features workers at assembly plants located in Georgia and Alabama — a wink to being American-made, and a nod intended to reassure consumers over tariff fears.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

When it comes to ads, Apple isn’t playing coy anymore

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 04:01:00 +0000

For years, Apple has played the role of the bystander in advertising — wealthy, capable and largely disinterested. It had the reach, the hardware, the data, the closed loop ecosystem, it had everything but the need.

Now, that’s starting to change.

Apple’s quiet rebrand of its search ads business to the more assertive “Apple Ads” may seem like a modest semantic update but in the context of platform power plays, language rarely shifts without intention. The move suggests that Apple is no longer content to just collect rent from the ad tech ecosystem it reshaped through privacy policies. It wants a larger piece of the action.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

How Google took control over online advertising, according to those who watched it happen

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 04:01:00 +0000

U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema just called it: Google broke the law to cement its monopoly over online advertising. Four weeks in September laid bare exactly how it did it. But if you missed the courtroom drama or need a refresher, here’s the unfiltered story of how Google boxed out rivals and took over online advertising — straight from the people who were caught in the crossfire.

But for those who were there from the beginning, the story of Google’s rise in ad tech was already written in the margins — long before any courtroom showdown.

Matt Wasserlauf, now the CEO of Blockboard, remembers it well.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

Report: Trump Reportedly To Do Away With IRS Direct File Program For No Discernible Reason

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 03:17:42 +0000

For three years now, a select group of states have had a pilot program through the IRS for its Direct File program. For years and years, companies like Intuit had gotten away with all kinds of shady tactics designed to lure people in with the promise of free tax prep filing using online software, only to have aggressive or deceptive methods for turning them into paying customers when they never should have been. Intuit’s tactics were so bad that the FTC ruled the company can’t advertise its services the way it had been previously along with nine-figure paybacks to the customers it had deceived.

Direct File and these shady doings by the tax-prep industry are directly related. The IRS already has all the information needed to prepare returns for a huge percentage of Americans that file simple tax returns and are typically in lower income brackets. Nobody has heard of any significant negative reaction to the Direct File pilot program, which expanded this year to more states, other than by the tax preparation industry themselves. If there was a problem with the program, we would have heard about it by now. By all accounts, it has been entirely successful.

So, of course, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to do away with it.

“The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government,” the AP article said. “Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had ‘deleted’ 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.”

The AP wrote that “two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.” The IRS will lose about a third of its staff this year through layoffs and employees accepting resignation offers, The New York Times reported yesterday.

The House GOP, which pushed for this move, couched its request as combatting a conflict of interest at the IRS. Keep in mind as you read this that the IRS already has the information that is populating its Direct File returns.

As you know, during the last tax year, the IRS rolled out its Direct File pilot program in 12 states, through which taxpayers file their taxes directly to the IRS instead of through a trusted accountant or reputable third-party preparation service. Under the guise of offering a convenient “free-to-file” alternative preparation service, the IRS asserts itself as the tax assessor, collector, preparer, and enforcer—all in one—when the program is used.

This is deeply concerning and a clear conflict of interest. The IRS has little incentive to ensure hardworking Americans do not pay more than they owe in taxes and may instead benefit from families and small businesses paying greater amounts than they are required by law. Furthermore, it is highly inappropriate for the IRS to serve as a tax preparer for taxpayers while also being the final enforcer of tax violations.

The letter goes on to complain that the Direct File program amounts to costing taxpayers roughly $800 per return based on the program’s budget. You should be able to see immediately how deeply silly this all is, but here are a couple of highlights.

Again, the government already has the information used in the Direct File returns. That’s how they’re created in the first place. The taxpayer then goes in and validates the information the IRS has, gets some input on the return itself, denotes either payment or refund information, and then they’re done. The IRS is already the enforcer of tax payments and would use the same information it has in any audit it was going to conduct. The letter from the GOP worries out loud about the IRS ramping up tax audits on individuals, which is very strange since the use of Direct File would eliminate any audits for those using it, since it’s all based on information the government already has. Whatever conflict of interest the GOP claims to have identified is entirely undiscoverable by this writer.

The letter goes on to complain about the national debt, which is very odd to include in the same letter that complains about there being too much enforcement around tax collection audits. In its complaint about the cost-per-return, it also entirely ignores the economy of scale the program would benefit from as it is rolled out to even more taxpayers. Were it to do so, the cost per return would almost certainly drop, and drop significantly, as much of what powers the service would already be in place as a sunk cost.

As for the trust the American people had in this program and the IRS after using it? Well, from the Treasury Departments own website…

90 percent of respondents ranked their overall experience as Excellent or Above Average.
90 percent of survey respondents who used customer support rated that experience as Excellent or Above Average.
When asked what they particularly liked, respondents most commonly cited Direct File’s ease of use, trustworthiness, and that it was free.
86 percent of respondents said that their experience with Direct File increased their trust in the IRS.

And so what Trump is reportedly planning to do is take an IRS program that people enjoyed using, and one which caused them to have more trust in the IRS and government, and one which is still in pilot and which would become more cost efficient with wider use… and eliminating it. Without, mind you, any stated good reason.

Somewhere, in some ivory tower, the Intuit board is certainly cheering.

Netflix Says Demand ‘Stable’ Amid Recession Fears

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 02:33:51 +0000

Shares of Netflix are sharply higher in after-hours trading on Thursday (April 17), as the world’s largest online streaming platform reported first-quarter earnings that beat the Wall Street consensus and revenue that was in line with expectations.

Netflix executives said that they see no impact from President Trump’s tariffs that have been roiling the macroeconomic picture — and don’t expect it to be a major factor going forward.

“We’re paying close attention, clearly, to the consumer sentiment and where the broader economy is moving, but based on what we are seeing by actually operating the business right now, there’s nothing really significant to note,” said Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix, during a conference call with analysts to discuss first-quarter earnings.

Peters said the company also takes comfort in the fact that “entertainment, historically, has been pretty resilient in tougher economic times.” That’s because whether people are happy or sad, they still watch TV and movies.

In past recessions, Netflix has been “generally quite resilient,” Peters added, meaning the company expects to do the same if a recession comes today.

Moreover, Peters pointed out that Netflix offers an ad-support $7.99 a month plan in its largest markets, which is an “incredible entertainment value” that “also gives us more resilience.”

“It’s an accessible price point, and we really do expect the demand for entertainment to remain strong,” Peters said.

As for macroeconomic uncertainty cutting into advertising revenue, Peters said advertising remains a small part of the top line so it would not have a big impact. “That smallness probably provides us an insulation to market shifts right now,” he said.

Netflix is the reigning online streaming platform with 302 million subscribers, followed by Prime Video (over 200 million) and Disney+ (125 million).

Netflix reported first quarter net income of $2.89 billion, or $6.61 per diluted share, compared with $2.33 billion, or $5.28 per share in the like quarter a year earnings. Revenue came to $10.54 billion, up from $9.37 billion. Netflix was expected to earn $5.66 per share on revenue of $10.5 billion, according to a consensus of analysts’ estimates.

CFO Spencer Neumann said on the call that subscriber growth was “healthy” in the first quarter, without elaborating. The just-concluded quarter is the first time Netflix did not disclose its new subscriber growth numbers.

The stock was up 2.7% in after-hours trading to $999.

Netflix said founder Reed Hastings is stepping down as executive chairman to be chairman of the board and a non-executive director.

Netflix Aims for $1 Trillion

This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Netflix internally is gunning for a $1 trillion market cap by 2030. It hopes to double revenue by then as well, to around $80 billion, and earn $9 billion in global ad sales.

The report said this year’s U.S. ad revenue is estimated at $2.15 billion, citing eMarketer figures. Netflix doesn’t disclose its ad sales numbers. Executives also want to triple Netflix’s operating income to $30 billion by 2030, the report said, and increase subscriber count to 410 million.

Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said internally executives do discuss “long-term aspirations.” But he said “this is not the same as forecast,” adding that its operating plans remain the same as its external forecasting guidance.

However, Peters added that Netflix does see potential for growth. Even with more than 300 million subscriber households, translating to an audience of more than 700 million people, it’s still a small slice of the global market.

“We’ve got plenty of room to grow our engagement, our revenue, our profit, and … become the most valued entertainment company,” Peters said.

Morningstar analyst Matthew Dolgin said in a research note this week that Netflix’s financial aspirations reported by the Journal “seem consistent” with management’s previous disclosures. However, these targets seem like “stretch” goals and will be “difficult to achieve,” the analyst said.

Dolgin said Netflix became successful by following a strategy of growing organically from the ground up instead of through costly acquisitions of traditional media businesses.

The company also was “wise” not to overspend by not bidding for a regular slate of major live sports programming, the analyst said, because it would have had to overpay to attract major sports leagues, the analyst said.

“These decisions now give Netflix the advantage of not having to manage a declining legacy business, and it isn’t burdened with expensive sports contracts or a subscriber base that is dependent on retaining sports rights,” Dolgin wrote.

The post Netflix Says Demand ‘Stable’ Amid Recession Fears appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Netflix revenue rises to $10.5 billion following price hike

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 20:29:45 +0000

Netflix said in its first quarter earnings report on Thursday that revenue reached $10.5 billion in the months since it raised prices. Thatâ€™s a 13 percent increase over the same time last year.

The streaming serviceâ€™s net income also grew to $2.9 billion, and the company says it expects more growth in the coming months when it sees â€œthe full quarter benefit from recent price changes and continued growth in membership and advertising revenue.â€

Netflix raised the prices across most of its plans in January, with its premium plan hitting $24.99 per month. It also increased the price of its Extra Member option â€” its solution to password sharing â€” to $8.99 per month. Though Netflix already rolled out the increase in the US, UK, and Argentina, the streamer now plans to do the same in France.

This is the first quarter that Netflix didnâ€™t reveal how many subscribers it gained or lost. It decided to only report â€œmajor subscriber milestonesâ€ last year, as other streams of revenue continue to grow, like advertising, continue to grow. Netflix last reported having 300 million global subscribers in January.

During an earnings call on Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters sai …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Inside the Stream Podcast: Why Sky’s Sky Glass is the Right Strategy, But the Wrong Execution

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:51:31 +0000

In October, 2021 Comcast and Sky announced “Sky Glass,” a package including a Sky-branded smart TV, Sky Stream (a streaming satellite TV service) and aggregated CTV apps. Colin was in London this past week attending a conference at which Sky executives spoke - but revealed little information about how Sky Glass is doing.

On this week’s podcast we dive deeply into the Sky Glass model, in which Sky customers either purchase upfront or in 48 monthly installments a smart TV (3 sizes available, 43-inches, 55-inches or 65-inches), then subscribe to a Sky Stream package, and also gain access to built-in apps from third-parties.

Sky Glass immediately intrigued me because it seemed to align with a concept I had been noodling around for the prior 6-9 months: the idea of TV OEMs either giving away smart TVs and/or pricing them so ridiculously low that consumers would be compelled to take the offer.

With each CTV advertising conference I hosted, it was becoming more and more apparent that CTV advertising would continue to boom simply because of linear’s demise and advertisers’ imperative to continue achieving their reach/frequency goals (I have referred to this as the “follow the eyeballs” rocket fuel that has powered CTV’s rise in the past 5 years). That’s all before discussing the targeting, optimization, interactivity and dynamic creative benefits of CTV.

More exciting to me was that it was beginning to become apparent that in the long-term CTV’s success would evolve beyond “follow the eyeballs” to a lower and/or full funnel medium, allowing it to emulate the massively successful playbook that has been run by search and social. Given the choice between selling smart TVs at negative gross margins, or simply giving them away to consumers, with some guaranteed monetization hooks in both high-margin CTV advertising and SVOD/MVPD services, the choice to me seemed relatively straightforward, particularly for certain TV OEMs.

I envisioned a third-party startup in the middle of the action (I subsequently discarded the idea for various reasons).

[ReadMore]Listen to the podcast now![/ReadMore]

Loosely speaking, this is a version of Gillette’s famous “razor and blades” strategy which has been widely copied in other industries (think printers and cartridges). In this case, “give away” the smart TVs and make it up and more on the services side. The “give away” doesn’t even need to be a total freebie, because fortunately for CTVs, their bulkiness requires delivery (and charges for doing so), set up (those pesky home theaters are never, ever plug-and-play), and often an older, existing TV (that requires disposal). In short, there are a host of upfront fees the provider could charge, likely more than offsetting the freebie TV.

When I read the Comcast/Sky press release in ’21 my first thought was “good for them, they’ve also figured out this opportunity - hooray.”

Unfortunately, Sky’s pricing for Sky Glass shows they have not. Because, rather than giving away the TVs, they have inexplicably chosen to charge (either upfront or via the 48-monthly installments) somewhere between 2 1/2 to 3 times what a similar smart TV would cost a consumer to buy online. In the world we now live in, with pricing transparency a few clicks away, consumers will immediately understand this is a lousy deal and move on.

(In my view it’s actually more than a lousy deal; it’s the kind of move that tarnishes brands’ reputations because savvy consumers lose trust in a brand when they see these types of “fool-me” offers).

To aggravate matters, the Sky Stream satellite streaming service is offered for the same price as the satellite service. Even though it’s clearly beneficial, for many reasons, for Sky to migrate existing and new subscribers away from satellite and to IP delivery, Sky doesn’t aggressively price Sky Stream relative to satellite - they both cost around $60 per month.

Colin and I explore all of this in the podcast. Colin highlights there are some similarities to the mobile phone market, where Apple and Google in particular have trained users to pay a premium for new models. But, as we discuss, those companies have rare - and extremely valuable - ecosystem and lock-in dynamics at work, which, on the surface Sky neither seems to enjoy nor even necessarily have “permission” from its subscribers to pursue. That doesn’t mean a bona fide razor and blades strategy for Sky Glass isn’t a worthwhile pursuit, which it is, but, at a minimum, for it to succeed it has to adhere to the rules of the game.

The fact that it doesn’t is yet another mystery to me in the whole Comcast-Sky drama. Comcast paid $39+ billion for Sky, yet never really articulated why it was doing so. The business has steadily declined since, highlighting how misguided the deal was in the first place (a video provider without a robust broadband product...really, what am I missing here?).

But that’s not all. As I wrote at length back in 2018 and 2020, here and here, what Comcast really should have done is acquire Hulu, if Disney would have acquiesced. For between $13-15 billion, a fraction of Sky’s cost, Comcast could have bought the Hulu shares it didn’t already own and become an overnight leader in streaming.

Hulu also would have been a fantastic foundation for Peacock, though with the Hulu brand now fully owned, the need for NBCUniversal to even launch Peacock would have probably been rendered moot. Fast forward to today and we know that Peacock is on its way to losing a staggering $5.5 billion between 2022-2023 as it struggles to catch up to Netflix and others (yes, Alice, unfortunately there are real costs to showing up dead last to a party and then completely switching your strategy from "Free" to "Paid" in a blink of an eye).

Sky is an albatross for a half-committed Comcast that seems to be belatedly flirting with the idea of buying Hulu from Disney. Cord-cutting rages. The biggest RSN group just declared bankruptcy. ESPN layoffs loom in the coming weeks. WBD’s future is anyone’s best guess.

As this all unfolds, you can find me in the cheap seats, pondering how CEO compensation in the media industry routinely runs into the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars per year. I’ll be easy to spot; I’m the one running basic Excel spreadsheets and compulsively scratching my head.

Listen to the podcast to learn more! (37 minutes, 19 seconds)

Browse all previous podcasts

Subscribe to Inside the Stream
Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music RSS

Google Trial Judge: Tech Giant Holds Illegal Ad Monopoly

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:44:08 +0000

A federal judge has ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology.

As The New York Times reported Thursday (April 17), Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google had violated the law to establish its dominance in the online advertising system.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and a group of states had sued the company, claiming that its monopoly in advertising technology (AdTech) helped Google charge higher prices and take a larger portion of each sale.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” said Judge Brinkema, who also dismissed one portion of the government’s case.

The NYT report notes that the ruling adds to other legal troubles facing the $1.88 trillion company, issues that could reshape Google and alter the power it holds over the internet.

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs, said in a statement provided to PYMNTS.

“We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

The company at trial had offered up expert testimony from economist Mark Israel, who argued regulates had focused too much on a small part of the online advertising sector — specifically, “open web display advertising,” which includes the rectangular ads that normally show up on websites when people browse on desktop computers.

Israel testified that this definition ignores the wider scope of competition faced by Google in the changing digital landscape, stressing that advertisers have increasingly shifted their spending to social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, or major online retailers like Amazon.

The ruling follows a decision from another judge last year that Google holds an online search monopoly. Now, that judge is considering a request by the DOJ to break up the company. The government has also sought to have Google sell some of its AdTech business.

Meanwhile, Google is also facing a $6.6 billion lawsuit in the United Kingdom. Filed this week, the suit claims the company exploited its dominant position in the online search market to drive up advertising costs for businesses.

Google has called the case meritless, with a spokesperson telling Reuters it was “yet another speculative and opportunistic case.”

The post Google Trial Judge: Tech Giant Holds Illegal Ad Monopoly appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Google Is Illegally Monopolizing Online Advertising Tech, Judge Rules

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:38:02 +0000

It was the second time in a year that a U.S. court found that the company had acted illegally to remain dominant.