ADIF challenges Google AdTech dominance: Advocates for fair and transparent digital advertising

tech.hindustantimes.com:

In a bold move, the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) is taking on Google's stranglehold on the AdTech industry. ADIF has released a statement wherein it is raising concern about the lack of fairness, transparency, and healthy competition in the digital advertising realm, alluding to Google's outsized influence. AdTech, a complex ecosystem governing digital advertising, was designed to ensure a level playing field for advertisers and publishers. However, Google's overwhelming market presence and questionable practices have skewed this balance, endangering fundamental principles of fairness and competition.

At the core of AdTech is a symbiotic relationship between advertisers and publishers. Nevertheless, both essential parties find themselves increasingly entangled in Google's web of control, incurring a high cost for this dependence. This results in a digital advertising landscape that tilts in favour of a single entity, undermining AdTech's core principles.

One crucial aspect of Google's dominance is in search advertising, especially the competitive realm of sponsored links on search engine result pages. The Ad Rank, a pivotal metric for sponsored link placement, operates in a closed, non-transparent environment. Google's dominance here is primarily due to its substantial market share, far-reaching influence, and vast scale.

Google's influence extends to programmatic bidding, a method for buying and selling ad inventory. This complex process involves various intermediaries and platforms, all of which Google dominates. This dominance casts a shadow over the entire programmatic advertising process.

Programmatic advertising relies on Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) for advertisers and Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) for