The European Commission has announced that it plans to fine Google €2.95 billion for breaching EU anti-trust rules by favouring its own adtech services over competing providers of adtech services, advertisers and online publishers. The Commission has instructed Google to bring these “self-preferencing” practices to an end, and to implement measures to prevent inherent conflicts of interest.
Google provides several adtech services that act between advertisers and publishers to display ads on websites or apps. The Commission’s investigation found that Google is dominant in the publisher ad servers market and the market for programmatic ad buying tools for the open web. Both markets are EEA-wide.
In June 2021, the Commission opened proceedings into anticompetitive conduct by Google in the online adtech sector and in June 2023, sent Google a Statement of Objections, to which the company responded in December 2023.
The Commission found that between at least 2014 and 2025, Google had abused its dominant position in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by:
- Favouring its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection process run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat; and
- Favouring AdX in the way its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges. Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, making it the most attractive ad exchange.
The Commission concluded that these actions were aimed at giving AdX a competitive advantage and may have resulted in the foreclosure of competing ad exchanges.
The Commission has ordered Google to bring these self-preferencing practices to an end. It has also ordered Google to implement measures to cease inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain. Google has been given 60 days to inform the Commission about the measures it intends to propose. The fine of €2.95 billion has been set based on the Commission’s 2006 guidelines on fines.
