Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that Google violated antitrust laws in a landmark case that the Department of Justice brought against the tech giant. Today we are going to explore what this means for advertisers. Any company that spends money on Google Ads should look into some of the details of the case, but since they can be so technical, we’re going to dedicate this blog to walking you through a few of the major points that we feel every advertiser should know.

4 Points of the Ruling & What It Means for Marketers

Point 1: Networks

When advertising with all search engines — Google, Microsoft Ads, Yahoo!, as well as partners like Meta or LinkedIn — advertisers can choose to advertise on Google.com directly and/or on their search networks. Both Microsoft and Google allow this functionality, even if advertisers are not aware of this setting. It’s common for both companies to make the network the default setting on a new account. This allows a new advertiser to show ads on network partners, as well as Google.com or Bing.com directly. They do this to allow maximum reach for clients who are using the same keywords to search for products and services on other websites.

  • DOJ POV: Google was getting a large portion of its volume of clicks from outside of Google.com (that is, through their search or network partners) — which many advertisers may not have even been aware of. They may have thought that it was all coming from Google properties.
  • MindgruveMacarta POV: For years, we have analyzed the difference in performance from clicks on search partners compared to Google. We measure everything from the cost of the click, the cost of the lead, and how the lead performed (that is, whether it converted into a sale) for our clients. We have consistently seen search partner traffic underperform, so we tend to turn this option off for the majority of our clients.

Point 2: Profitability

Part of being a monopoly is that customers do not have a choice or the choice they have is not a comparable product. During this case, there was testimony from large clients like JP Morgan Chase and Home Depot about their inability to shift spend to the competing platform by Microsoft. Microsoft’s engine, Bing, was unable to handle the volume from these clients at near the same efficiency. As a result, large clients were “forced” to use Google or risk losing customers.

  • DOJ POV: Part of the discovery in this case highlighted how large clients like Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase couldn’t shift their spend from Google to Microsoft Ads because Google’s platform is built to scale more efficiently than Microsoft’s.
  • MindgruveMacarta POV: We have seen the limitations that advertising on Bing poses across all of the clients we work for. Our challenges with Microsoft Ads primarily relate to the quality of traffic and the platform’s ability to reach a wider audience, which effectively reinforces the recent ruling: Clients find that they must be on Google or they’ll miss out on new customers.

Point 3: Google isn’t dominant in non-search or non-text ads (images)

Google knew that their business model wasn’t as dominant in capturing traffic in non-search or non-text ad formats. Think social (like the marketing that appears on Meta) or display (like platforms such as The Trade Desk, which serve non-text-based ads). As a result, Google focused on securing their authority in the search world. Their methods of holding that market captive is what’s at issue in the recent ruling.

  • DOJ POV: Because Google became the default search engine on devices and browsers, they also became the default text ad platform (for Apple phones or Safari) to limit Microsoft’s growth and subdue their competition. In 2022, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, paid Apple $20 billion annually to be Safari’s default search engine. 
  • MindgruveMacarta POV: When it comes to which media we’ll run for our clients, we’re agnostic. We recommend whatever’s in the best interest of our client. We also make sure they are reaching customers through all aspects of the buying journey, which means leveraging social platforms, display platforms, endemic platforms, CTV, radio, and more. The key is making sure to measure performance with our analytics team on how each media channel drives lasting results. 

Point 4: Google hid or made things difficult

For years, Google has slowly been removing different metrics that we, as advertisers, found useful, mostly under the guide that those metrics weren’t useful or necessary. An example of this: Average ad position. 

Regular advertisers used to be able to see what the average position was and we’d make adjustments accordingly. We didn’t want to be too high (and therefore paying too much) or too low (missing out on opportunities). In one sense, Google is correct in that generating the appropriate ROAS or target CPL matters more than metrics relating to the average position of an ad. This week’s ruling, however, provided some clarity into Google’s thinking behind its decision to remove or obfuscate metrics.

  • DOJ POV: The ruling asserted that Google’s monopolistic power allowed it to increase text ad prices without any competitive constraint. Effectively, it could make auction adjustments without having to consider the pricing of Microsoft Ads or any other rival. Google has long operated within a supracompetitive market that it dominated. As such, the ruling found, it only worried about bad publicity — which it avoided through upping its prices so secretively and incrementally that many advertisers didn’t even realize that Google was responsible for the shift into unsustainable costs.
  • MindgruveMacarta POV: As metrics disappeared, our teams focused on what mattered for our clients — the bottom line. Regardless of what we could or couldn’t see, the goal was always to maximize the investment that was entrusted to us. We constructed accounts that delivered the maximum ROAS, target CPL, or desired lead volume within the correct geographic area. The key to consistently delivering these goals for clients resulted from partnering with analytics — something that cannot be done when the different specialties within a media team are siloed. 

What does this ruling mean for the future of search?

Rest assured, Google is still going to be operating as a search engine, and a powerful one. But we could see some game-changing possible outcomes from this case:

  • Google may provide more transparency into performance — restoring some of the metrics, such as average position, that were previously available to advertisers.
  • When the EU ruled against Google in Shopping, Google was forced to open up their shopping functionality to competitors and reduce CPC costs. A similar approach could be taken with search following this case.
  • Google may be forced to renegotiate deals, like the $20-billion-a-year one they have with Apple, that make it easier for customers to switch from the default search. Data may have to be shared differently than it is today. If this ruling holds, this feature of the case is likely to be one of the biggest changes that it causes.

Immediate Next Steps to Protect Your Search Investment

If you are spending money on Google Ads or Microsoft Ads right now, this is a great time to conduct an audit. Evaluate each campaign to make sure it’s meeting or exceeding the goals you’ve set. As the case has outlined, Google made changes that some advertisers may not be aware of that are costing them their hard-earned money.

Additional sources on the case details:

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