Australian class action targets Google’s ad tech platforms
A new class action has been mounted to recover compensation for Australian website and app publishers who have been impacted by Google’s alleged “misuse of market power in the advertising technology sector”.
Following speculation that local class actions were being investigated, law firm Woodsford is organising and funding the class action in Australia, which will be led by Piper Alderman.
The class action “relates to global misconduct by Google”, according to the law firm, and it follows a number of international antitrust proceedings brought against Google over abuse of its digital advertising monopoly.
Last September, the US Department of Justice contended that Google dominates technology that pairs publishers with advertisers, taking a cut from both ends of the deal. In addition, they alleged that Google has a monopoly over the ad exchange market.
“One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here,” Department of Justice lawyers argued at the time.
Google has also been hit with lawsuits from the Canadian Competition Bureau, plus investigations by the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, class actions in the UK, US, and the Netherlands, and a settlement with the French competition regulator.
The ad-tech tools Woodsford is targeting are Google Ad Manager, Doubleclick for Publishers, Google Ad Exchange, and Google AdSense or AdMob, which it argues act in concert to control the market, to the detriment of Australian publishers.
“If you are domiciled in Australia and have had a website or app and sold advertising space [programmatically] using Google’s ad tech platforms, you can join the Australian class action as a group member,” Alderman said.
Participation in the action will be confidential so Google will not become aware of the identity of group members.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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