At MediaMath, we tried to innovate around these realities, partnering with agencies to create combined products in which our platform was engineered to package and deliver an agency’s unique media and data assets, which were then sold to the agency’s advertisers. This created (gasp) real value for advertisers while enabling a richer share of ad dollars for the business partners.
But the bottom-line impact versus rebates just wasn’t big enough to take share from Google, and our top line was unaffected.
In one case, I even witnessed how leverage was exerted by Google from parts of its business entirely outside adtech and media buying to influence its share of ad budgets. My client, a brilliant head of procurement in France, saw Google’s strategy for what it was: a naked play to commoditize his agency through technology, where, in his estimation, the technology development was being financed by his own clients.
“First they eat your thumb, then they eat your hand, and soon you don’t exist,” he told me. He refused to let Google into his programmatic practice, where MediaMath commanded nearly 100% share.
Until he couldn’t refuse any longer.
A subsidiary of his parent company sought to ink a deal with Google to power its autonomous electric car business but, I was told, would not sign unless substantial share of his agency’s ad dollars were moved to Google’s ad and tech businesses. The next year, our revenues from this client plummeted by more than 50%.
I’m heartened to see a possibility that Google may get its comeuppance in courts, though I do fear this litigation is roughly 20 years too late.
But the stakes remain big. Advertising is 1% of GDP and principally responsible for the sales growth of the rest of the 99%. Of all advertising, digital is 60%, and that share is growing fast. Soon all advertising will be digital advertising. Getting the incentives right and putting a stop to Google’s rapacious practices is existential.