Gannett sues Google for alleged advertising monopoly

The country’s largest newspaper publisher filed a lawsuit against Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., for allegedly monopolizing online advertising space.

Gannett Co., the owner of over half a thousand digital news and media brands, reported Tuesday that it alleged that Google was controlling the publishers’ ad services.

“It has carried out a sophisticated, anti-competitive, and deceptive scheme for well over a decade,” said the company alleging that Google “manipulates the process of real-time bidding to exclude rival exchanges, underpay for publisher inventory, and ultimately reduce the quality and quantity of online news.”

Gannett said the technology company had changed its tactics over time but that the results have not failed to affect the company and news consumers.

“The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits,” he said.

In the lawsuit, the company claimed that Google earned $30 billion by manipulating auctions of advertising space in 2022 alone. “That is six times more revenue than every single U.S. news publication made from digital advertising combined. Google, as middleman, has dwarfed the content creators that invest in journalists, editors, photographers, and many others to produce important news content.”

The technology company has 90% of the publisher ad server market and 60% of the ad exchange market, which Gannett says allows Google to manipulate ad sales processes in real time.

The Department of Justice had already filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of monopolizing digital advertising.

“Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively referred to as the ad tech stack, that website publishers depend on to sell ads and that advertisers rely on to buy ads and reach potential customers,” the DOJ lawsuit stated.