#googleadvertising — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #googleadvertising, aggregated by home.social.
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ICYMI: Google says targets become the efficiency lever in budget-capped campaigns: Smec's Mike Ryan calls August 17 no cliff and allows 30 to 60 days to read results, hours before Google posted its FAQ. Which auctions do campaigns enter next? https://ppc.land/google-says-targets-become-the-efficiency-lever-in-budget-capped-campaigns/ #GoogleAdvertising #PPC #DigitalMarketing #BudgetCampaigns #Efficiency
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Opinion: Google Has Become Too Powerful for Democracy to Ignore
By Cliff Potts | WPS News Opinion
BAYBAY CITY, LEYTE, Philippines, August 3, 2026 — 0005 PhST
The question is no longer whether Google has become one of the most influential corporations in human history. That question has already been answered.
The real question is whether any democratic society should permit a single private corporation to exercise such sweeping control over how information is discovered, distributed, monetized, and preserved.
Google is no longer merely a search engine.
Through its parent company, Alphabet, Google controls the world’s dominant search platform, YouTube, the Android operating system, the Google Play Store, one of the largest digital-advertising operations in existence, the Chrome browser, major artificial-intelligence systems, mapping services, analytics, cloud infrastructure, and an extraordinary volume of information about its users.
Each of those operations is powerful on its own.
Combined under one corporate roof, they create a digital ecosystem capable of influencing who is found, who earns money, which businesses reach customers, which applications succeed, which publishers remain visible, and which voices effectively disappear.
That ownership structure creates the opportunity for abuse.
Google Search can reinforce Google advertising. Android can reinforce Google Search. Chrome can reinforce both. The Play Store can dictate the terms under which software developers reach mobile users. YouTube can determine which videos are recommended, which channels qualify for advertising revenue, and which publishers lose practical access to audiences they spent years building.
None of this requires a secret meeting in which executives decide to destroy one particular publisher.
A recommendation system can quietly stop recommending a channel. A search-ranking adjustment can bury a publication. An automated advertising classification can eliminate revenue. An account restriction can remove years of accumulated work.
The person or organization affected may receive little more than a generic notice—or no useful explanation at all.
That is an unacceptable amount of unaccountable power.
Breaking Up Google Is Not a Fringe Proposal
Calls for structural action against Google are not confined to activists, angry creators, or small publishers.
In 2024, a federal court found that Google had illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search-text advertising. During the remedies phase, the United States Department of Justice proposed measures that included forcing Google to divest Chrome and restricting its use of Android and other products to protect its search dominance.
The court ultimately rejected the proposed Chrome divestiture. Its final judgment instead prohibited certain exclusive distribution contracts, required Google to provide qualifying competitors with access to specified search and user-interaction data, ordered syndication opportunities for search results and advertising, and established continuing technical oversight.
Those remedies were significant, but the court’s decision not to order a breakup does not make structural separation an unreasonable idea. It confirms that divestiture was seriously proposed, litigated, and considered within an actual federal antitrust case—not invented in an internet comment section.
The Justice Department has also won a separate case in which a federal court found that Google unlawfully monopolized important parts of the open-web digital-advertising market. According to the Justice Department, Google’s conduct harmed publishers, competition, and ultimately the consumers who depend upon information distributed across the open web.
That finding should matter greatly to every independent news organization.
A company that controls advertising technology while also operating competing services does not occupy the position of a neutral intermediary. It participates in the same market it helps govern.
Google disputes allegations against it and continues exercising its legal rights in court. It is entitled to do so.
The public is equally entitled to question whether the company should continue controlling so many interconnected layers of the digital economy.
Europe Already Calls Alphabet a Gatekeeper
The European Union has formally designated Alphabet a digital “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act.
The designation covers core services including Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Alphabet’s online-advertising operations.
The term is appropriate.
These services do not merely compete within digital markets. They frequently determine how other businesses enter those markets, find customers, collect revenue, and survive.
The Digital Markets Act attempts to address that power before another decade-long competition case reaches its conclusion. Instead of relying exclusively upon punishment after damage has occurred, it places advance obligations and prohibitions upon companies possessing entrenched control over essential digital services.
That approach recognizes a basic problem with ordinary antitrust enforcement: by the time a case is investigated, tried, appealed, and remedied, smaller competitors may already be gone.
A fine imposed years later does not restore a publication that closed, a developer who abandoned an application, or a creator whose audience disappeared.
When financial penalties become routine operating expenses, governments must move beyond fines and consider structural remedies.
The Transparency Failure
I cannot honestly claim, without reliable supporting data, that most political creators affected by demonetization or reduced distribution are left-wing, progressive, or pro-democracy publishers.
Progressive creators have accused YouTube of unequal treatment.
Conservative creators have made the opposite accusation.
The available public information does not establish which political group experiences the greatest overall harm.
That absence of evidence does not clear YouTube.
It exposes the transparency problem.
Independent researchers cannot adequately determine whether YouTube’s enforcement is politically neutral because the company does not disclose enough channel-level information about recommendation reductions, monetization classifications, automated decisions, reversals, comparative enforcement, and the practical effects of its algorithms.
YouTube publishes extensive rules governing monetization and advertiser-friendly content. Those policies describe broad categories of material that may receive limited advertising or no advertising.
They do not necessarily tell an individual publisher why views dropped from thousands to hundreds and then to tens.
They do not reveal whether a channel stopped appearing in recommendations.
They do not explain whether an automated system changed its classification of the channel.
They do not demonstrate whether politically comparable channels received comparable treatment.
They do not provide the public with enough information to audit a system that helps determine what billions of people see.
That is the issue.
A system does not need to ban political speech outright to diminish it. It can simply stop showing that speech to people.
I Have Watched the Audience Disappear
This is not an abstract concern for me.
I have watched my own work receive thousands of views, then hundreds, and eventually numbers in the tens. That decline occurred while the company controlling distribution provided no intelligible explanation of what changed.
I cannot prove in a courtroom that Google or YouTube politically targeted Cliff Potts.
I can prove that an opaque, Google-owned system possessed the practical ability to withdraw access to an audience without explaining itself in any meaningful way.
That alone is a democratic problem.
It is also an antitrust problem.
Journalism, political commentary, music, education, and public advocacy increasingly depend upon privately operated systems that can alter distribution without notice. Publishers may technically remain free to speak while being denied any realistic opportunity to be heard.
Freedom of speech is not a legal guarantee of an audience.
But when one corporation has acquired extraordinary control over whether an audience can find that speech, elected governments have every right to investigate how that power is being exercised.
Break Apart the Conflicting Functions
The answer is not another vague request that YouTube “do better.”
The ownership structure itself must be examined.
Search should not reinforce advertising.
Advertising should not reinforce YouTube.
Android should not reinforce Search.
The Play Store should not reinforce every other Google business.
Chrome should not function as another mechanism for protecting Google’s position.
Artificial intelligence should not be allowed to absorb information from independent publishers, answer users directly, and then deprive the original publishers of the traffic required to survive.
Conflicting business functions should be separated.
Self-preferencing should be prohibited.
Recommendation and monetization systems should be independently audited.
Publishers and creators should receive meaningful explanations when distribution or revenue is materially restricted.
Appeals should be decided by accountable human reviewers rather than disappearing into another automated system.
Regulators should have access to the records necessary to determine whether enforcement is consistent, discriminatory, anticompetitive, or politically uneven.
Independent researchers should be permitted to study the effects of recommendation systems without depending entirely upon information selected and released by the company being examined.
When fines fail to change conduct, structural separation should remain available.
These are not attacks upon innovation.
They are protections against concentrated power.
Democratic societies regulate utilities, financial institutions, telecommunications systems, transportation networks, and other industries capable of affecting the public at enormous scale.
They should not exempt the corporations governing digital discovery merely because their control is exercised through algorithms instead of physical gates.
No private company should possess the practical ability to determine who is discovered, who is heard, who earns a living, and who quietly disappears from public view without meaningful explanation or independent oversight.
Google has become too powerful for democracy to ignore.
The only remaining question is whether democratic governments will act before that power becomes permanent.
Sources
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: United States and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC
European Commission: Digital Markets Act Designated Gatekeepers
European Commission: The Digital Markets Act
YouTube: Channel Monetization Policies
YouTube: What Kind of Content Can I Monetize?
Contact Cliff Potts
Cliff Potts
Founder, Publisher & Editor
WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, PhilippinesWPS News
WPS.NewsBluesky — Preferred Public Contact
WTFM.LOLOccupy 2.5
Occupy25.comCliff Potts
CliffPotts.orgCliff Potts is also the creator of Cliff Potts & the AI Rebellion, with music available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, TIDAL, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms worldwide.
For news, commentary, music, and ongoing projects, begin with WPS.News or contact Cliff publicly through Bluesky at WTFM.LOL.
#algorithmicTransparency #Alphabet #Android #antitrust #BigTechRegulation #Chrome #CliffPotts #Democracy #DepartmentOfJustice #digitalGatekeepers #DigitalMarketsAct #EuropeanUnion #Google #GoogleAdvertising #GoogleBreakup #GoogleMonopoly #GooglePlayStore #GoogleSearch #independentPublishers #journalism #politicalSpeech #recommendationAlgorithms #structuralSeparation #WPSNewsOpinion #YouTube #YouTubeDemonetization -
Variety: YouTube Ad Sales Keep Growing at Healthy Clip, Rising 13% to $11 Billion in Q2. “YouTube posted ad sales of $11.06 billion for the second quarter of 2026, up 12.6% year over year. The results exceeded Wall Street analysts expectations for ad revenue of $10.8 billion, per StreetAccount.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/23/variety-youtube-ad-sales-keep-growing-at-healthy-clip-rising-13-to-11-billion-in-q2/ -
Search Engine Land: Google AI Mode ads reach nearly 30% of queries: Study. “Google’s AI Mode showed text ads on 29.45% of commercial queries in a new SE Ranking study, less than a year after ads began appearing in AI-generated search answers. Ads appeared on 14,733 queries in the study, which analyzed U.S. commercial searches where text ads could appear, excluding product carousels.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/16/google-ai-mode-ads-reach-nearly-30-of-queries-study-search-engine-land/ -
TechCrunch: Google will now disclose which ads are made with AI. “While Google prohibits misleading and deceptive ads, an ad can still leverage AI to create some type of synthetic or digitally altered content. Until now, that’s something Google only required election ads to disclose.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/10/techcrunch-google-will-now-disclose-which-ads-are-made-with-ai/ -
Reuters: Google appeals Indian ruling over its ads platform, citing consumer harm. “Google has challenged an Indian court ruling that it infringed on a company’s trademark rights by allowing rivals to use its name as an advertising keyword, arguing the decision will hurt consumers, documents reviewed by Reuters show.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/09/reuters-google-appeals-indian-ruling-over-its-ads-platform-citing-consumer-harm/ -
Search Engine Land: Google begins testing healthcare ads in AI Mode. “Google confirmed it is testing healthcare-related ads in AI Mode, marking the latest expansion of advertising into the company’s AI-powered search experiences.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/06/04/search-engine-land-google-begins-testing-healthcare-ads-in-ai-mode/ -
TechCrunch: Founders seize on Indian court ruling to revive criticism of Google’s ad business. “A recent Indian court ruling against Google’s keyword advertising practices has gained fresh attention after founders said competitors have long used the system to siphon off customers and force companies to pay to protect their own brands.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/06/02/techcrunch-founders-seize-on-indian-court-ruling-to-revive-criticism-of-googles-ad-business/ -
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Reuters: Google appeals US court ruling on search monopoly. “Alphabet’s Google on Friday appealed a Washington federal judge’s ruling that it holds illegal monopolies in online search and related advertising.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/23/reuters-google-appeals-us-court-ruling-on-search-monopoly/ -
Reuters: Switzerland probes alleged pacts to avoid keyword bidding on Google and Bing . “Switzerland’s competition commission has opened an investigation into suspected anti-competitive pacts in which travel companies and online casinos agreed not to bid against each other for search engine keywords.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/30/reuters-switzerland-probes-alleged-pacts-to-avoid-keyword-bidding-on-google-and-bing/ -
Search Engine Roundtable: Google Updates Alcohol, Prescription Drugs, Gambling & Government Policies. “Google has updated or is updating a number of Google Ads and Google Merchant Center policies. This goes across alcohol, prescription drugs, gambling and games and government documents and services policies.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/03/06/search-engine-roundtable-google-updates-alcohol-prescription-drugs-gambling-government-policies/ -
Bloomberg: Google Hit by EU Antitrust Probe Over Search Ads Pricing. “Google, the target for billions of euros in European Union antitrust fines, has been hit by a fresh EU probe over concerns it’s illegally rigging the cost of advertising on its search engine.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/13/bloomberg-google-hit-by-eu-antitrust-probe-over-search-ads-pricing/ -
Search Engine Journal: Google Disputes Report Claiming Ads Are Coming To Gemini In 2026. “Google is publicly pushing back on an Adweek report that claimed the company told advertising clients it plans to bring ads to its Gemini AI chatbot next year. Dan Taylor, Google’s Vice President of Global Ads, responded directly on X shortly after the story published, calling the report inaccurate and […]
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Krebs on Security: Drones to Diplomas: How Russia’s Largest Private University is Linked to a $25M Essay Mill. “A sprawling academic cheating network turbocharged by Google Ads that has generated nearly $25 million in revenue has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian university builds drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
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Search Engine Roundtable: Google Ads No Longer Allows Online Horse Racing Betting. “Google Ads updated its gambling policy to disallow all promotion of online gambling-promoting content for horse racing targeting the United States. Google said this goes into effect as of December 1, 2025.”
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Search Engine Land: Google’s proposed ad tech fixes face EU scrutiny. “The European Commission is asking industry players to review Google’s proposal to settle major antitrust charges involving its advertising technology business — a case that has already led to nearly €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in fines.”
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Phone Arena: T-Mobile just lost a customer forever thanks to a Google Maps ad that nearly caused a crash. “The author described driving toward a destination when Google Maps suddenly asked whether they wanted to add a stop at a nearby T-Mobile store. The prompt appeared in large alert-style lettering just as they were passing through an intersection, and they felt that any unexpected movement […]
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New York Times: The Fate of Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly Is Now in a Judge’s Hands. This link goes to a gift article. “Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is on the clock. The federal judge, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, heard three hours of closing arguments on Friday from lawyers for the Justice Department and Google over the right way to fix the company’s […]
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MediaPost: Google Begins Displaying Ads In ‘AI Mode’. “Google has begun displaying ads in AI Mode, the company’s AI search engine, placing them at the bottom of the responses on the page. Ad results labelled with the sponsored tag resemble the organic link cards that serve up above.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/22/mediapost-google-begins-displaying-ads-in-ai-mode/
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Search Engine Land: Google Ads adds account-level political content setting. “Google Ads expanded its ‘Political content’ declaration, allowing advertisers to set a default political-ads preference at the account level — not just within individual campaigns. The feature quietly rolled out after Google introduced the campaign-level setting in August 2025.”
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Search Engine Roundtable: Publishers Say Google Used Their Data to Cheat Them, Raptive Lawsuit. “Raptive alleges that Google has illegally monopolized the digital advertising market for over a decade through a series of systematic, anticompetitive, and deceptive schemes. Raptive alleges Google systematically rigged ad auctions by leveraging its multiple roles in the ad-tech stack (as a […]
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Search Engine Land: Google to expand ads in AI Overviews to more markets. “Google will roll out ads within AI Overviews beyond the U.S. to select English-speaking markets by the end of 2025, the company confirmed during its Google Access event last week.”
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Lifehacker: You Can Now Hide Sponsored Ads in Google Search. “Previously, these ads would appear one after another, each within its own ‘Sponsored’ header. Going forward, you’ll only see one ‘Sponsored’ header, with all sponsored links listed below. And the best part?”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/14/lifehacker-you-can-now-hide-sponsored-ads-in-google-search/
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Search Engine Roundtable: Google To Label Some Search Ads With “Not A Government Website”. “Google explained that if a search ad is promoting categories of government documents and services enforced under the Government documents and services policy, and it is not certified as a government provider, Google may add that label on it.”
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Search Engine Land: Google’s ad tech monopoly remedies trial begins. “A trial many expected to fizzle has delivered a bombshell: Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Google illegally monopolized digital advertising, setting up a remedies phase that could force major changes to its ad tech stack. But with Google already losing ground in ad tech and the web fragmenting into retail media, walled gardens, […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/24/search-engine-land-googles-ad-tech-monopoly-remedies-trial-begins/
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Bloomberg: Google to Skip Full Ad Split in Reply to €3 Billion EU Fine. “Google will meet the European Union’s deadline to propose changes to its advertising technology business after a near-€3 billion ($3.5 billion) fine — but won’t include the full breakup the EU and industry rivals have previously pushed for.”
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Search Engine Journal: DOJ Seeks Google Ad Manager Break Up As Remedies Trial Begins. “Google returns to court on Monday for the remedies phase of the Department of Justice’s ad-tech antitrust case, where the government is asking the judge to order a divestiture of Google Ad Manager.”
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Search Engine Journal: Google Quietly Raised Ad Prices, Court Orders More Transparency. “Federal court documents show Google raised search ad prices through small adjustments that advertisers couldn’t distinguish from normal auction fluctuations. The details are based on Judge Amit P. Mehta’s remedies opinion, which states that Google used internal ‘pricing knobs’ to increase ad prices by […]
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Search Engine Land: Amazon resumes Google Shopping ads – but not in the U.S.. “Amazon restarted spending on Google Shopping ads across its international domains, exactly one month after abruptly pausing them – a move that now looks like a deliberate marketing test.”