This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan #AMERICAAct, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, #Googbook represents both publishers *and* advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
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This is part two of an ongoing, five-part series. Part one, the introduction, is here. Part three, about banning surveillance ads, is here. Part four, about opening up app stores, is here. Part five, about enshrining "end-to-end" delivery on social media, is here. Download this whole series as a...
How does tech steal money from the news? Lots of ways! One important one: tech steals ad revenue. 51% of every ad dollar gets gobbled up by tech companies - primarily the cozy, collusive #AdTech duopoly of #Google/#Facebook (AKA #Googbook). If we can shatter the market power of the concentrated ad-tech industry, news companies would go back to getting 80-90% of the ad revenue their reporting generated, which would pay for more reporting.
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The ad-exchange receives a constant stream of chances to place ads. This stream is generated by the "#SupplySidePlatform" (#SSP), a service that represents publishers who want to sell ads.
Meta/#Facebook and Google both the "full stack" of ads: they represent buyers *and* sellers, and they operate the marketplace. When the sale closes, #Googbook collects a commission from the advertiser, another from the publisher, *and* a fee for running the market.
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Whenever discussions of #adtech monopolization comes up, someone will inevitably point out that the market isn't as stagnant as it seems - after all, Amazon was able to enter the market despite the dominance of the #Googbook duopoly, and build a $31b/year advertising product. But Amazon's advertising isn't like Google or Meta's advertising (not that those are good - just different).
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Cory Doctorow