Today on The Stack: Troubles Continue for Google; UK Ad Spend Soars; Today’s MadTech Daily

Troubled times continue for Google as a French court ordered the tech titan to pay Equativ a sum of €26.5m over its anti-competitive practices in online advertising. Google has yet to decide if it will appeal the ruling. This week, Microsoft also accused Google of running what it named ‘shadow campaigns’ with the intention of supposedly discrediting Microsoft’s position with competition authorities and policymakers, as well as misleading the public. 

In the UK, the latest ad expenditure report from AA/WARC revealed that ad spend in the region rose 13.4%, hitting £10bn during Q2 2024. In the US, the ad market’s growth expanded at a double-digit rate for the third consecutive month in September.  

Elsewhere, Meta and Reuters were the latest to strike an AI-publisher deal. Meta’s AI chatbot will harness Reuters’ content in order to inform users’ questions regarding real time news and current events.