September 16th-September 22nd // Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Here's how Google will be punished in its ad tech antitrust case - Judge Leonie Brinkema's full remedies in the US Department of Justice's ad tech antitrust case against Google are now public. The judge opted for behavioral remedies, not a breakup as the DOJ wanted. On the sell side, Google will have to open up both AdX (the ad exchange) and Google Ad Manager (GAM, the ad server, formerly known as DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP) to the open-source Prebid framework so that they compete on the same level-playing field as others. Rival publisher ad servers will get access to AdX's bids in the same way that GAM sees AdX’s bids, and Google will need to give publishers visibility into which bids won and lost. On the demand side, AdWords (aka Google Ads, Google’s ad network) is barred from bidding directly into GAM and must bid into other exchanges as it does into AdX. DV360 remains untouched by the remedies. A court-appointed monitor will watch over compliance for six years, and enforcement extends worldwide, not just in the US. The next big milestone is October 2nd, the deadline for both sides to submit their own proposed final judgments about how these rules get enforced.

Opinion: Publishers finally get real-time bid data and equal treatment of AdX bids, removing one of the biggest practical reasons to stay locked into GAM. Rival ad servers and ad exchanges, rejoice (and start reworking your “why us vs. GAM” pitch decks)! We suspect there will be some publisher defection from GAM in the next few years because of these remedies. There may also be renewed startup activity in the ad serving sector. Publishers likely want alternatives that will bring them demand and great support while not simultaneously killing their site traffic with consumer-facing zero-click AI tools. Unlike … Google.

Taboola acquires Dianomi, betting big on affluent finance audiences🔒 - Taboola is buying Dianomi, a UK-based ad tech company whose sponsored-content ad network mirrors Taboola's own business but focuses on the finance sector. The acquisition opens doors to publishers Taboola hasn't previously partnered with, including CNN Business, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, along with finance-focused advertisers like Bank of America, Charles Schwab, and Invesco. Taboola is paying $25.4M upfront, with a potential earn-out pushing the total to $36.1M, a roughly 68% premium over Dianomi's pre-announcement share price. The move comes alongside Taboola's launch of Realize ID, which stitches together fragmented consumer signals to capture purchase intent in real time.

Deal Grades:
Taboola: C
Dianomi: A-

Opinion: Finance audiences are high-value, and buying an established player like Dianomi gives Taboola a shortcut to accessing them at scale. That said, it’s an odd time to be doubling down on open web publisher relationships, as human web traffic continues to decline due to AI. We’d be spending our money elsewhere.

Infillion acquires location data company Foursquare - The acquisition gives Infillion direct ownership of a major location data asset. Foursquare will stay intact as its own brand under Infillion's umbrella, and it can keep selling data to clients even if they use rival ad platforms. Infillion projects the purchase will lift both its revenue and staff count by 20%-25%. Roughly 150 Foursquare employees are expected to move over, though CEO Gary Little will not be joining; instead, SVP Lindsey Kintner will take charge of Infillion's newly formed data unit. This acquisition builds on Infillion's earlier purchase of Catalina, combining Catalina's purchase-history data with Foursquare's visit and location data, giving Infillion a fuller picture for ad targeting and outcome measurement. Financial terms of the Foursquare deal are undisclosed, though Foursquare's last known valuation was $450M back in 2019, and it has raised about $412M in total funding. We have a feeling Infillion paid much less for the once-popular “check-in” app. Remember, Infillion also acquired DSP MediaMath in a bankruptcy auction back in 2023.

Opinion: Infillion is becoming a commerce-focused ad tech holding company of sorts, not too dissimilar from companies like Nexxen, Verve, and Zeta Global. The strategy makes sense: buy distressed ad tech assets, stitch them together, and sell an end-to-end marketing platform to capture dollars from marketers looking to move away from point solutions or the walled gardens. Verve does this for mobile, Nexxen for CTV. Infillion’s focus is clearly on commerce, and building a closed loop from commerce data targeting to outcomes. 

Amazon locks out Meta's Muse in agentic shopping standoff🔒 - Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from shopping on its site, saying Meta never disclosed or got authorization for Muse to access the store. Users who try using Muse for shopping on Amazon now hit a popup accusing Muse of violating Amazon's Conditions of Use. Amazon claims Muse captures and stores customer credentials, scrapes account data, and doesn't identify itself, meaning an undisclosed third party is handling transactions and sensitive data without Amazon's knowledge. The tension is a bit surprising considering the two companies' existing partnership, which includes Amazon products sold inside Facebook and Instagram and a multibillion-dollar deal for Meta to use Amazon's AI chips. This isn't Amazon's first fight over agents accessing its product catalog either, having already sued Perplexity and blocked agents built by Google and OpenAI.

Opinion: Agentic commerce is becoming a turf war. Whoever owns the consumer-facing agentic experience will amass tremendous leverage and monetization opportunity. Amazon knows this. Amazon also knows that without Amazon’s product catalog, any agentic commerce experience will feel incomplete to consumers. So it's putting up a wall. Amazon still has a lot of work to do to make Alexa for Shopping a great consumer agentic experience, and as ubiquitous as Amazon itself, in order to capture the upside of agentic commerce. In the meantime, the push-pull between Amazon and AI companies will continue. 

Microsoft exec called AI scraping "the largest theft of labor in human history” - Newly unsealed material in The New York Times' copyright suit against OpenAI and Microsoft cut against the companies' fair use defense. A Microsoft director called the AI training practices "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions" in an internal memo. OpenAI's head of ChatGPT wrote that chatbots pose an "existential threat" to publishers because they are increasingly used as a substitute for the original source. The filings allege the AI companies scraped content from behind paywalls without detection and stripped copyright notices. Microsoft's data reportedly showed click-through rates to NYT's site falling as much as 93% after Copilot's launch compared to traditional Bing search. CEO Satya Nadella testified that paywalled content should be licensed and he would have required OpenAI to retrain its models had he known paywalled material was used without permission.

Opinion: This case could become the moment AI companies stop being able to hide behind "fair use" as a blanket defense. It’s about time. The government needs to wake up and build a real regulatory framework to rein in the AI companies. Protect creators! Also, protect humans. It would suck if AI wiped out humanity in the next 10 years because our elected officials were asleep at the wheel.

Thanks for reading!