A Google breakup would rewire the ad business. Here’s how top marketers are responding. – Business Insider
2025-04-24T08:25:00Z
While big marketers have long pushed Google for more transparency, they rely on its reach and lack alternatives, ad insiders said.
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Google could get broken up. The response from marketers? Shrug.
Google is battling separate rulings in two landmark US antitrust cases that found the company illegally monopolized the search and adtech businesses. While the exact remedies haven’t yet been determined, Google is trying to avoid divesting assets like its prized Chrome browser and key parts of its under-the-hood adtech. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reports earnings on Thursday, when execs might speak more to investors about the cases.
Marketers collectively spent more than $264 billion advertising on Google properties like YouTube and search last year. So, they must be champing at the bit at the prospect of the biggest player in the market amputating limbs and losing some power, right?
Right?
Well, not so fast.
Many of the agitators pushing for a Google breakup are those who, unsurprisingly, stand to benefit the most: owners of demand-side platforms, ad servers, and supply-side platforms that directly compete with Google’s adtech, or the publishers who feel their revenues have been decimated by unfair ad auction shenanigans.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find the CMO of a major brand talking about the matter publicly, or even privately putting much stock in it. For now, Google has large audiences that they desire and ads that appear to work.
As Rob Norman, the former chief digital officer of ad buying giant GroupM, wryly puts it: “My feeling is advertisers enjoy a well-organized oligopoly — Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and a few others.”
“This is a drug people have become addicted to,” said a marketer at a midsize company, who asked for anonymity to protect business relationships. “Breakup or no breakup, people keep spending in these places because there’s a lack of real alternatives that deliver.”
That’s not to say CMOs won’t welcome a more marketer-friendly Google.
Marketers and marketing consultants told BI that they were hopeful the outcome of both antitrust cases could force — or at least encourage — Google to be more transparent about its data and open up its systems to operate with other third-party tools. There’s also a somewhat optimistic theory that any weakening of Google could make it less powerful when it comes to the table on negotiating major ad deals.
The rulings might be monumental in some corners of the ad industry, but at a time when CMOs face the prospect of a recession, tariffs, geopolitical uncertainty, DEI rollbacks, and major advertising budget cuts, dealing with the fallout of a potential Google breakup lies somewhere near the bottom of a marketer’s to-do list.
“For enterprise CMOs, this is an issue to delegate,” said Steve Boehler, founder of the marketing consulting firm Mercer Island Group.
It’s also a precarious time for CMOs to take a public stand on any hot-button issue.
Google didn’t provide a comment for this story.
Ad industry insiders have long pushed for Google to open up its ‘black box’
Major marketers may not immediately react, but the two cases still have the potential to shake up search and online advertising.
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Let’s quickly get you up to speed.
District Judge Amit Mehta is presiding over the Google search antitrust case. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Last summer, a judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly with its online search business. The case returned to court again this week to decide what remedies could be imposed on Google. Those could include forcing it to sell Chrome, ending exclusive deals with the likes of Apple to be the default search engine on smartphones, or breaking off its Android mobile operating system.
And last week, another judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in certain adtech markets. Google owns an ad server that publishers use to manage their inventory, buying tools that advertisers use to purchase ads, and an ad exchange that connects the two. This dynamic was akin, according to a Google manager cited in the ruling, to “Goldman or Citibank owning the NYSE.” The judge will set a hearing later to determine the remedies in that case, which industry experts believe could include the forced disposal of Google’s publisher-side adtech business.
The huge caveat in both cases is that Google has said it plans to appeal, which could push back the implementation of any proposed remedy by years.
For some in the ad industry, the finer details are irrelevant because the Schadenfreude of seeing Google lose two successive antitrust cases in court is victory enough.
“Agencies, advertisers all understand that they are paying a premium for some lack of competitive advantage,” said Dave Helmreich, CEO of the adtech company Triplelift.
“There is a desire that I’ve heard from some people in the industry for Google to just get punished for something,” he added.
And remedies aside, some industry insiders are hopeful that the ongoing antitrust scrutiny, both in the US and abroad, will mean Google will be more open to ceding to some long-asked-for demands. Could it finally let advertisers use their own preferred adtech to buy ads on YouTube, rather than having to go through Google directly? Might Google become less precious about letting advertisers audit their Google ad campaigns with third-party measurement tools rather than simply using Google’s ad server?
“Advertisers want interoperability to foster competition and independence to allow accountability,” said Gerry D’Angelo, senior advisor at McKinsey and former vice president of global media at Procter & Gamble.
Such changes could raise the bar for the entire adtech industry, said Arielle Garcia, a former agency executive now serving as chief operating officer of the nonprofit ad watchdog Check My Ads.
“Given Google’s dominance in adtech, they have been able to establish the norms,” said Garcia, who used the example of Google not enforcing “know your customer” requirements on the publishers it monetizes on its ad network. “Why would a smaller player invest in quality or policy enforcement in a way a larger player has not?”
As search evolves, Google’s dominance is wobbling
As the Google search and adtech cases continue to wind their way through the lengthy court process, CMOs are monitoring broader changes in consumer behavior and how they should adapt their marketing budgets in response.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is navigating the company through huge changes in the way consumers use AI. Getty Images
Competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, TikTok, and Amazon are gaining on Google’s search dominance. Research firm EMARKETER, a sister company of Business Insider, predicts Google will fall below a 50% share of the US search ad market in 2025, for the first time since it started tracking the space in 2008. This is partly due to competition from retail media platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay, in addition to new players in the general search market.
“Google will be forced to compete harder and evolve one way or another, perhaps faster than it would have done anyway through the natural pace of change taking place in the market,” said Andrew Warner, a marketing consultant and former CMO at brands such as Sony, LG, Monster, and Expedia.
“That in itself is probably a plus for marketers and the consumers they serve,” Warner added.
For better or for worse, many marketers are OK with the status quo for now.
“There is not a common feeling that advertisers want Google to become less powerful because, in exchange for Google’s seeming omnipresence, advertisers get peerless signals for efficient and effective media planning, buying, and optimization,” said Nikhil Lai, senior analyst at the research firm Forrester.
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