A New York federal judge has cleared the way for most of Gannett’s and the Daily Mail’s ad tech claims against Google to go before a jury. The September 30 ruling rejected Google’s effort to short-circuit claims around Project Bernanke, Enhanced Dynamic Allocation and Poirot.
Judge P. Kevin Castel’s 88-page opinion keeps the core damages claims alive. In the publishers’ account, several internal Google programs tilted auctions in Google’s favor.
- Enhanced Dynamic Allocation: high-value reserved impressions became available to AdX bidders at manipulated price floors.
- Project Bernanke and related programs: bid pools allegedly steered Google Ads demand toward AdX and lifted win rates.
- Project Poirot: DV360 bid adjustments allegedly cut spending on rival exchanges and raised it on AdX.
- Minimum Bid to Win: AdX shared the lowest winning bid after each auction, giving its buyers a prediction advantage.
The numbers are big. Economists put damages at $599,955,198 for the Daily Mail and $900,771,489 for Gannett. A certified class of AdX publishers claims $1.72 billion through March 31, 2024. Google challenged the expert work behind those figures and lost on every count.
Why it matters
These cases are not just legal battles. They describe auction mechanics that can quietly change win rates, CPMs and take rates. An internal Google memorandum quoted in the opinion reportedly said Bernanke lifted the AdX win rate from 37% to 44% and added $290 million in revenue.
The ruling also moves beyond the 2025 Virginia decision that found Google monopolized publisher ad server and ad exchange markets. Now a jury will hear practices that the earlier case did not resolve.
For performance marketers and publishers, the strategic risk is asymmetric information. If one buying tool can see auction-clearing data or steer demand toward its own exchange, best practice bidding may not reflect a clean market. That can inflate acquisition costs or suppress publisher yield even when in-platform reports look efficient.
Where Google won
Castel dismissed both publishers’ New York consumer protection claims because the court saw these as complex commercial deals between sophisticated players, not consumer-oriented deceptions. Inform Inc., a defunct video ad company, lost its federal antitrust claims entirely.
What to do about it
You don’t need to wait for a verdict. Audit your programmatic setup with the same discipline you apply to spend and creative.
Pull win rate, CPM and take-rate data by exchange and buying source. Flag cases where one demand source wins at unusually low clear prices or direct deals lose to $1-floor programmatic bids. Test floors and alternative setups to see whether yield changes materially. Buyers can compare performance between DV360 and non-Google demand sources to spot inflated bid patterns.
The principle is simple: trust the auction, but verify the mechanics.
Source: PPC Land
