News Corp would have lost $9 million in 2017 by ditching Google ads, ex-exec testifies

By Jody Godoy

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - News Corp in 2017 estimated losing at least $9 million in ad revenue that year if it had switched away from Google's massive advertising apparatus, keeping the media conglomerate captive to the Big Tech company, a former News Corp executive testified on Tuesday.

"I felt like they were holding us hostage," Stephanie Layser said the second day of Google's antitrust trial in Virginia.

Google frustrated publishers by introducing features that benefited itself more than them, said Layser, who worked in advertising technology at News Corp from 2017 to 2022. However, almost no one in the industry used anything else, because Google's publisher ad server is tied to Google's ad exchange, she said.

The trial is expected to last several weeks, with the U.S. Department of Justice seeking to show that Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers, advertiser ad networks and the ad exchanges that connect the two.

NewsCorp documents shown at trial estimated that in 2016, the publisher made $83.3 million from ads sold instantaneously through ad tech tools. More than half of those transactions went through Google's ad exchange, with $18.4 million from Google ads advertisers.

The publisher estimated that around half of that, or $9 million, was exclusive to Google and would be lost in any shift to another product.

By the time she left, around 70-80% of News Corp ad transactions flowed through Google's ad exchange, Layser said.

Google has said that the case is based on an outdated look at the industry, and that large publishers use an average of six different platforms to sell ads that there are more than 80 such services.

At trial, prosecutors are seeking to show Google used dominant positions in technology for publishers and advertisers to keep them from using other tools and undercut bids placed through competitors' products.

Layser was the second publisher witness to testify at the trial. Tim Wolfe, an advertising executive at Gannett, testified on Monday that the company has used Google's publisher ad server for around 13 years, and that there are no other realistic options.

Google adtech competitors such as Trade Desk, Comcast and PubMatic are on the list of potential witnesses, as are more than two dozen current or former Google employees and executives.

If U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors' request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company's publisher ad server and its ad exchange.

(This story has been refiled to fix a typographical error in the headline and in paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in Alexandria, Virginia; Editing by Richard Chang)