A number of Google witnesses, together with Craycroft and senior director of engineering Nirmal Jayaram, stated the corporate doesn’t use first-party knowledge from merchandise like Search or YouTube for advert focusing on on open net show. Google’s attorneys additionally requested a buy-side witness, Jay Friedman of Goodway Group, if he had proof that Google makes use of its first-party knowledge for advert focusing on, and he additionally stated he doesn’t.
As a substitute, the corporate stated, it depends on cookies and third-party alternate match charges for focusing on. The declare aimed to prop up Google’s argument that it doesn’t use its huge shops of information to keep up an unfair benefit within the adtech house.
The assertion, nonetheless, baffled some trade specialists, who’ve instructed that the argument seems to be contradictory or just a semantic twist, given how closely Google markets its first-party knowledge and focusing on capabilities to advertisers. The skepticism facilities on how Google defines “utilizing first-party knowledge” and the way it defines “open net”—whether or not media transacted on AdX after which DFP is taken into account “open net,” for instance, was unclear to some.
There are “two believable, non-mutually-exclusive potentialities: One, Google has been overselling the advantages of its sturdy first-party knowledge trove to advertisers, and two, Google is enjoying gold-medal-level semantics to have the ability to deny its use of first-party knowledge to the court docket with a straight face,” Arielle Garcia, chief working officer at adtech watchdog Examine My Adverts, advised ADWEEK. “It could possibly be that Google is drawing disingenuous distinctions, for instance, across the definition of first-party knowledge or between ‘focusing on’ and ‘personalization.’”
Goodway Group’s Friedman, who served as a DOJ witness within the case, advised ADWEEK: “The extra extraordinary the declare, the extra extraordinary the proof required is. It falls on Google to show [this claim], given the huge proof of different improper actions and habits that had been proven all through this and different trials.”
3. Oracle, Adobe, and The Commerce Desk had been named as potential AdX consumers
An evaluation by funding financial institution Lazard recognized a handful of potential AdX consumers, in accordance with testimony final week.
Lazard was tapped by the tech big in 2020 to assist map a possible sale of AdX. The financial institution named a handful of organizations that is perhaps considering buying the platform, together with Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, SAP, and The Commerce Desk. It additionally instructed that some personal fairness corporations is perhaps open to the deal.
High execs at Google acknowledged that the tech big had thought-about promoting or presumably shuttering AdX for various years.
4. Google tried and failed to dam a key DOJ witness from testifying
On Oct. 2, the night time earlier than Stephanie Layser, a former Information Corp exec and programmatic knowledgeable who was within the header bidding vanguard of the 2010s, was set to take the stand, Google filed a movement to dam her from testifying.
The corporate argued in court docket filings that Layser wasn’t technically savvy sufficient, writing that she “has no private data of the technical feasibility of any of the proposed cures on this case, as she has by no means examined Google’s supply code and has no data of Google’s technical infrastructure.”
