The UK’s competition watchdog on Thursday launched a new investigation into Google’s digital advertising businesses.
The investigation, launched by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), will look into the tech giant’s practices in advertising technology intermediation, also known as the “ad tech stack,” a set of platforms and tools needed to facilitate the sale of online advertising space between advertisers and content publishers.
According to the CMA, UK advertisers spent around £1.8 billion on such digital advertising in 2019.
The watchdog said Google has a strong position at various different levels of this space, providing a wide range of services including platforms where advertisers can buy online advertising space, technology that automates the sale of advertising space, and those for managing ad inventories for publishers, which decide which ads to show….