The European Commission has sent questionnaires to publishers and advertising companies, asking them about Google’s position in the online advertising market.
Editor’s note: This article comes from Tencent Technology.
On January 21st, according to a European Commission document obtained by foreign media, the EU antitrust regulator has sought information from advertisers about Google’s advertising technology practices. Two years ago, the European Commission just concluded a decade-long investigation of Google Shopping, advertising and Android businesses, and issued a huge fine of up to 8.2 billion euros (about 10 billion US dollars).
It is reported that the European Commission has sent questionnaires to publishers and advertising companies, asking them about Google’s position in the online advertising market. Google is the main middleman between publishers and advertisers in the online advertising market. However, these issues may not lead to a formal investigation.
Before EU investigators took this action, Ken Paxton, the U.S. Attorney General of the State of Texas, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google’s ad technology business, accusing Google of abusing its monopoly position and competing with Facebook. Collusion, shut down competitors’ advertising exchanges. Google and Facebook together account for more than half of the global Internet advertising sales market. Both companies are currently the target of a lawsuit filed by the United States over its 2018 transaction, which gives Facebook advertisers the option to place ads on Google’s publishing partner network.
Google subsequently refuted this. Adam Cohen, the company’s director of economic policy, said that Google just wants to clarify the facts and eliminate the wrong view of the public bidding process for its ads. “Attorney General Paxton is trying to portray Google’s activities in the advertising field as evil,” Cohen said. “It’s the opposite. Unlike some B2B companies in this field, consumer Internet companies such as Google have an incentive to remain active. User experience, maintaining a sustainable Internet for everyone-consumers, advertisers, and publishers.”
The main concern of the European Commission is whether Google abuses its position to arrange auctions for its own interests and bundles some advertising services into contracts, harming the interests of publishers and advertisers. In the online advertising market, intermediary fees usually account for 40% to 60% of advertisers’ spending. The questionnaire contains a series of surveys on Google’s behavior and the company’s views on a series of changes in rules. For example, Google decided in 2016 to collect data from users who log in to Google services (such as Google Maps and Gmail) and from online searches. Data combined.
The European Commission’s questionnaire stated: “Certain Google’s practices may impede the entry and expansion of competitors, and/or protect Google’s potential markets related to data collection, access, processing, use, and monetization. The position of neighboring and downstream markets that provide online services.” The questionnaire also asked the surveyed company to outline Google’s YThe importance of ouTube to their advertising campaigns and their overall advertising expenditures in Google ad search campaigns. In addition, the questionnaire also asked companies whether Facebook can be considered a competitor to Google. The deadline for submitting the survey is Friday.
The European Commission responded on Wednesday that these questionnaires are part of a survey of Google’s data usage. “This investigation covers all Google’s services, including digital advertising and advertising technology chain,” the European Commission law enforcement officer said on Wednesday. The European Commission also wants to know whether advertisers will get rebates when they use Google intermediaries, which allow advertisers or media organizations to purchase advertising inventory from multiple sources.
Google said: “We compete with many companies in the industry to give people fine control over how their information is used to create personalized ads, and limit the sharing of personal data to protect people’s privacy. We have been working with The European Commission and other institutions are in contact with this important discussion in the industry and will continue to do so.” (Tencent Technology Compilation/Wuji)