The DOJ’s antitrust case against Google could upend the digital ad industry—but with AI reshaping discovery and search, it’s also a chance to rebuild the ecosystem on fairer, more transparent terms.
The US Department of Justice is taking on one of the most powerful players in digital advertising. In its high-profile antitrust case against Google, the DOJ argues that the tech giant has used its dominance across the ad tech stack to suppress competition and extract unfair value from both publishers and advertisers.
But the stakes here go far beyond antitrust law. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled thatGoogle illegally monopolized ad tech by tying its publisher ad server to its ad exchange. With a remedies trial set for September 2025, Google could be forced to break up its advertising business entirely. For the first time in decades, we’re looking at the possibility of a fundamentally different digital advertising ecosystem.
The legal pressure comes at the same time as AI is transforming how we search and discover information. ChatGPT has 190 million daily users and new AI-powered competitors emerge every day, posing a real existential threat to Google. The question isn’t whether change is coming; it’s whether our industry will seize this moment to build something better.
Google’s Grip on the Stack
As someone who has spent 11 years driving product vision and strategy across e-commerce, advertising, search and discovery, and digital subscriptions, I’ve witnessed firsthand how Google’s dominance has shaped and often constrained our industry. Today, we stand at a critical juncture.
At the core of the case is Google’s vertical integration; it owns the leading ad exchange (AdX), the dominant ad server for publishers (DFP) and tools that represent advertisers on the buy side. This gives Google an unprecedented position to control auctions, set prices and prioritize its products in ways that competitors and customers can’t see, let alone challenge.
When an apparel company wants to advertise online, they use Google Ads to bid on search terms. Those bids flow through Google’s demand-side platform into Google’s ad exchange, where they compete in auctions run by Google’s publisher ad server. Google takes a cut at every step, often 20% to 30% of total ad spend, while controlling the rules, the pricing and the data. It’s like playing poker where the house sets the rules, deals the cards and takes a percentage of every pot.
The DOJ contends that this setup has led to an uneven playing field, where publishers earn less, advertisers pay more, and alternative technologies struggle to gain traction. Google defends the model as efficient and pro-innovation, arguing that any forced breakup would create more harm than good.
A ruling in the DOJ’s favor could lead to the separation of key parts of Google’s ad business, forcing structural change in how digital advertising operates.
But even if the court hands down a lenient remedy, the trial has already pulled long-standing issues (opacity, conflict of interest and market concentration) into the spotlight. At the center of it all, one key question arises: Can one company set the rules of a $600 billion marketplace?
The industry should see this moment for what it is: a fork in the road. We can either wait for regulation to reset the rules or begin rewriting them ourselves.
Don’t Wait for the Verdict
For years, publishers have operated in a system that asks for trust without offering visibility. We’ve had to navigate complex auctions with limited transparency, watched our margins shrink and built custom analytics tools just to understand how revenue is earned or lost. Advertisers, meanwhile, are left guessing how much of their spend reaches real audiences versus being siphoned off by intermediaries.
That means asking harder questions: Why are we still tolerating black-box auctions? Why can’t buyers and sellers operate in an open, auditable marketplace? And how did we let one company become the clearinghouse for so many critical functions?
The current setup hasn’t just stifled competition; it’s weakened the connective tissue of trust between platforms, publishers and advertisers. Rebuilding that trust will require a shift in mindset and incentives.
Publishers should demand tools that allow for deeper control over pricing, data and demand sources. Advertisers should pursue cleaner supply paths and hold partners accountable for transparency. And the broader industry should invest in solutions that reward fairness and interoperability rather than consolidation.
These conversations are already happening. There’s growing momentum around publisher alliances, first-party data strategies and alternative ad infrastructure. I’ve seen publishers explore header bidding, build direct relationships with advertisers and invest in privacy-preserving technologies that reduce dependence on any single platform.
The rise of retail media networks shows what’s possible when industries build their own solutions. These networks now represent $68 billion in US ad spending, revenue that flows directly between advertisers and publishers without Google. Similarly, independent ad tech companies like The Trade Desk and Magnite are proving that transparent, efficient alternatives can thrive.
But we’re not moving fast enough.
The ad tech ecosystem doesn’t need to wait for a court order to evolve. The future belongs to those who build open marketplaces where innovation thrives, not those who wait for regulators to act.
What does openness, choice and competition look like in practice? It means:
- Open standards that let any company participate in digital advertising without paying gatekeepers
- Real-time bidding data that shows exactly where money flows and why
- Portable audience data that publishers and advertisers control, not platforms
- Multiple viable ad exchanges competing on service and price, not market power
- Transparent fee structures where everyone knows what they’re paying for
No single legal outcome will fix everything. But this case marks the strongest public challenge to the idea that dominance equals inevitability. And whether through regulation or reinvention, the message is clear: The old rules are up for debate. It’s time to write better ones.
The intersection of antitrust scrutiny and AI disruption is a signal for us as product builders to rethink our assumptions and act faster. Let’s all be bold enough to take the plunge.