Google Fined 220 Million Euros By French Competition Authority For Having Abused Its Dominant Position In The Online Advertising Sector

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Anti-trust/Competition Law, Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment, Antitrust, EU Competition , Advertising, Marketing & Branding
• Law Firm: Soulier Avocats
• Author: Ms Pauline Kubat

In decision No. n'21-D-11 dated June 7, 20211, the Autorité de la concurrence (French Competition Authority or "FCA") imposed a 220 million euros fine on Google.

The reason: Google had engaged into discriminatory practices aimed at favoring its own adverting technologies to the detriment of the other players of the sector.

The matter was brought before the French Competition Authority by several newspaper publishers (News. Corp. Inc.², the Figaro group³ and the Rossel La Voix group⁴).

What market players and what technologies ?

Online advertising operates thanks to the combination of the following technologies and market players:

• Advertisers are companies wishing to display their ads and buy advertising space for this purpose.

• On the other side of the chain, there are the publishers, i.e., the websites and applications offering advertising space. These include newspaper publishers which, following the decline of the written press, now generate most of their revenue from online advertising.

• In order to buy advertising space, advertisers use purchasing platforms (known as DSPs for Demand Side Platforms) that allow them to access programmatic auction platforms (known as SSPs for Supply Side Platforms), which are virtual algorithmic marketplaces where supply (publishers) and demand (advertisers) meet and where prices are set.

• Ad servers are the tools that allow publishers to choose and display ads on their website or mobile app. These servers allow publishers to choose whether to transact directly with advertisers or indirectly through supply side platforms.

Although publishers often use several supply side platforms, they usually only access these platforms through a single ad server that carries out automated bidding between these platforms.

The discriminatory practices complained of

The complaint by the newspaper publishers concerned two advertising technologies offered by Google:

• the Doubleclick for publishers ad server (hereinafter "DFP");

• the platform for the programmatic sale of Doubleclick AdExchange advertising space (hereinafter "AdX").

Indeed, the complainants argued that these two technologies benefit each other, to the detriment of competing technology providers, through the following mechanisms:

• Firstly, the DFP ad server allegedly organized an unfair competition tending to favor its own AdX platform.

As such, DFP indicated to AdX the price offered by competing platforms, which enables AdX to adapt its prices and, thereby, to...