Google used for years a secret program called “Project Bernanke” to increase your customers’ chances of winning bids for a competitive advertising space, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing court documents filed with the Texas-led antitrust suit against Google. The state argues that the program provided Google with an unfair competitive advantage over rival ad buying tools and allowed publishers to pay less to win bids.
Ironically, the company spilled the beans on its own secret program. The newspaper claims that the court documents in question – which were reviewed by the media, although Google has since stamped them under seal –were introduced by Google earlier this week in response to the Texas lawsuit and were not drafted correctly when hung on the public court dossier. Google acknowledged the existence of the Bernanke Project in its response.
For anyone unfamiliar with the complex world of digital advertising, here’s a very basic breakdown. Publishers or the technical name of any website that runs ads sell advertising space on their website. Advertisers place bids for a specific ad slot on ad exchanges, which are like auction houses where whoever bids the highest price wins the advertised ad slot. You can find a more detailed and technical explanation here.
Return to Google now. In court documents, Google explains that the Bernanke Project used data about historical bids made through Google Ads to target the customer, which refers to advertisers who work with Google and pay to do so.he makes bids and tip the odds in his favor at advertising auctions, according to the Journal. These efforts increased Google’s chances of winning auctions that would otherwise have been won by rival ad tools and also placed millions of dollars in revenue in Google’s pockets.
Google did not report publishers selling ads through their ad purchasing systems on the existence of the Bernanke Project.
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Exactly how many millions Google has made of the Bernanke Project is not mentioned in the magazine’s report. However, Google confirmed that the project was expected to generate revenue of $ 230 million in 2013.
According to the newspaper, at the presentation Google denied there was a problem using the unique information it had to communicate to it customer offers. The company said this was “comparable to data held by other purchasing tools.”
The revelation of the Bernanke Project is likely to lead to greater control of Google, which has strong control over the digital advertising market for both the seller and the buyer with their products. At an antitrust meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on Major Technologies in the summer of 2020, lawmakers cited a study Google was found to control between 50-60% of the publisher market, or players selling their ad space, and 50-90% of the advertiser’s side, referring to those who buy that ad space. . He most of Google’s revenue it comes from your advertising business.
In fact, Google’s dominance in the digital advertising market is the subject of Texas antitrust lawsuits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who also has his own group of legal issues, is alleging that Google repeatedly abused its monopoly power to control the price of ads and auctions. This behavior, Paxton says, allows Google to “make illegal profits by continually withdrawing money from these websites and putting them in their pockets.”
“In this monopoly of advertising in an electronically listed market, Google is basically engaged in ‘inside information’ by acting as a pitcher, catcher, batsman and referee, all at the same time,” Paxton said in statement in December. “This is not about the ‘free market.’ This is anti-market and illegal under state and federal law.”
The documents also shed light on those of Google Blue Jedi deal with Facebook, the deal in which Facebook kept going into the headline bidding business and instead run that advertising business through Google’s advertising platform. The newspaper stated that, according to the agreement, Facebook was to spend $ 500 million or more on Ads Manager or Google AdMob auctions in the fourth year of the agreement, between other details.
Gizmodo reached out to Google on Sunday about the magazine’s report, but received no response at the time of publication. We will be sure to update this blog if we receive news.
In a statement to the Journal, Google spokesman Peter Schottenfels said the complaint “misrepresents many aspects of our advertising technology business. We look forward to bringing our case to court.”