News in brief: Google’s Ad Stack Court Face-off Finalises; Google Modifies Search; AI Overviews Decreasing Publisher Traffic 

Google’s Ad Stack Court Face-off Finalises

Google and the US Department of Justice met in court for the final time this week to lay out their closing arguments for the case casting judgement over Google’s ad tech stack. With closing arguments from both sides having been made, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema will now determine the ruling. Her decision is expected by the end of the year. If Brinkema declares the tech giant’s ad tech setup a monopoly, a second trial will be held. This trial would examine potential measures to remedy Google’s monopoly over the digital ad ecosystem. As we await Brinkema’s decision, Google already faces a set of proposed actions from the DOJ to remedy its search monopoly. 

Google Modifies Search

Speaking of which – Google has announced various modifications to its services including many to its search. Several changes come in response to the mounting pressure it faces in the EU, as the tech giant attempts to comply with the region’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Among its new search features are expanded formatted units which allow users to choose between results that take them to comparison sites or directly to suppliers’ sites and new ad units for comparison sites.

Google has also introduced a Page Annotation feature for the Google App browser for iOS which uses links to take users from publishers' sites back to its search page – this will be applicable for words such as products, places and celebrity names. An opt-out form has been included, although the feature takes 30 days to be disabled after the form has been submitted.

In three EU markets (Belgium, Estonia and Germany) it will also be testing a feature which displays search results for hotels queries in blue link style, the way its search engine originally displayed results. Some have suggested that Google is attempting to pit its rival online travel aggregators against smaller travel retailers. 

AI Overviews Decreasing Publisher Traffic 

Keeping our focus on Google, many publishers are saying that its recently introduced AI Overviews feature has been reducing their potential traffic. A publishing industry trade body representative reports that publishers have seen a 5-10% decrease in traffic since the feature was launched, according to The Media Leader. This figure is an estimate based on early indicators. Following the feature’s rollout, Google had assured publishers that AI Overviews would bring them more clicks than regular web listings – this, however, does not appear to be the case.