Publishers have for years operated in a system largely controlled by Google, relying on Google’s ad server, with Google’s ad exchange getting priority in the auction. For publishers, OpenPath was a way to get paid without going through Google or the SSPs. It’s a product that is, at least theoretically, most valuable in an ecosystem where publishers are looking for an alternative to Google.
Now, the court-ordered remedies handed to Google in the government’s antitrust case over AdX and DFP may dilute that pitch. Google will have to make sure AdX bids through Prebid on the same terms it offers to DFP, and must show publishers those bids. In a theoretically fairer and more transparent auction, OpenPath’s value prop as the honest counterweight loses some of its punch.
The Trade Desk and Google declined ADWEEK’s requests for comment.
What People Are Saying
The DSP’s bigger prediction, of course, was a total withdrawal from the open web.
Amid Google’s ongoing battles with the Justice Department last year, Green told Axios: “I do think you can expect Google to exit the open internet at some point, simply because, strategically, it’s good for them. It’s where all their privacy and antitrust risks come from, but it’s not where all the money comes from.”
21 months later, that reality has yet to materialize. Federal courts declined to force a breakup of either Google’s adtech business or its search business in the DOJ’s two antitrust cases against the company.
While The Trade Desk has consistently reaffirmed its commitment to building more open and transparent substitutes for walled garden adtech, the walls on the garden would appear to have grown higher still.
That’s not to say Green’s prediction couldn’t pan out. Google admitted in a court filing last year that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (specifying in the press that it was referring to open-web display advertising in particular). In any case, its business is shifting away from open web browsing as it transforms its core search product into an AI answer engine.
