The CEO of $50 billion adtech giant The Trade Desk is calling for Google to be broken up

Jeff Green, right, appeared on stage at ATS London 2024 conference, interviewed by ExchangeWire CEO Ciarán O’Kane.

As Google faces down the first week of its landmark US antitrust trial over its alleged digital ad market monopoly, the chief executive of one of its biggest adtech competitors, The Trade Desk, has called for the company to be broken up.

The case, brought by the US Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general, alleges that Google used acquisitions and anticompetitive ad auction tactics to build an illegal monopoly of the digital ad market. It hones in on the under-the-hood adtech tools that power the ad auctions that take place as a webpage loads.

Speaking at ExchangeWire’s ATS conference in London on Wednesday, The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green said that Google built its lead in the adtech market by operating the tools publishers use to sell their ad space, the software advertisers use to buy ads, and the exchange that connects those buyers and sellers.

“They have been the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, and the judge and the jury,” of the online ad ecosystem, Green said of Google. “The remedy is to say you have to quit at least one of those jobs: You can’t be all three.”

Continuing the analogy, Green said the profession that makes the least amount of money is the judge and the jury. In Google’s case, this would be AdX, its ad exchange. Green predicted Google would probably concede to spin off this part of its business, should the judge rule the company had indeed operated an illegal monopoly.

Google operates in the sell-side and buy-side of online ads, plus the exchange connecting them.

The DOJ and state attorneys general are also calling for a Google breakup. Analysts have said this scenario would greatly benefit adtech companies like The Trade Desk as well as big tech companies who make money from advertising like Meta and Amazon.

Green said Google may also choose, as a concession, to get out of the so-called sell-side of the business where it represents publishers other than its own properties. Instead, Green said, the tech giant could just focus on monetizing Google.com and YouTube. However, Green said unraveling its DoubleClick for Publishers ad server — software that allows publishers to manage their ad inventory — would be complicated.

“The second they bought DoubleClick, they began rewriting it and made it fully integrated, so it will take a bunch of work for them to do that,” Green said, referring to Google’s 2008 $3.1 billion purchase of the adtech company DoubleClick, which forms a key part of the DOJ’s case against the company.

Green, a frequent Google critic, said no matter the trial’s outcome, he is confident the future looks bright for the ad-funded internet.

“Whether it’s because Google is afraid of having to go through this again — the CMA is watching, there are regulators all over the world watching this, and they are not done yet,” Green said, referring to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. Last week, the CMA said its investigation into Google’s adtech practices had provisionally found the company had abused its dominant positions in operating its publisher ad server and ad buying tools. Google said it disagreed with the CMA’s findings.

“I do believe that Google’s behavior is going to change and the market will get fairer,” Green said. “I’ve always said The Trade Desk managed to win in an unfair market — imagine what we could do in a fair market.”

Since its founding in 2009, The Trade Desk — which operates a demand-side platform for advertisers and ad agencies — has grown into an adtech juggernaut. Having debuted on the Nasdaq in 2016, the California-based adtech company now has a market capitalization of almost $50 billion.

Google and its lawyers have argued that the DOJ’s antitrust case focuses on a “narrow view” of the adtech market that is not based on reality and that advertisers and publishers have the choice to use hundreds of different companies that it competes with.

Google referred B-17 to a blog post it published last week. In it, Google named-checked The Trade Desk as one of those alternative players in the ad market. Green said he found the comparison flattering when Sundar Pichai, in 2022, named TikTok and The Trade Desk as its competitors.

“I’ve joked that even in David and Goliath, David was at least 30% or 40% the size of Goliath,” Green said. He added that The Trade Desk’s market capitalization is only about 2% of Google’s on any given day, meaning an “ant” would be a better comparison.

Green spoke at the London conference on the same day Jed Dederick, The Trade Desk’s chief revenue officer, gave evidence in Google’s antitrust trial in Virginia.