• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 5, 2024

While Google and the advertising industry wait for the outcome of Google's antitrust trial, another year of NewFronts in New York City has come and gone, as the company forges ahead with pitching advertisers on the future of media such as its streaming ad offerings.

In the days and weeks to come, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta could rule in the government's antitrust case against Google.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) accused the company of monopolizing the search market, blocking others from competing. It said Google struck illegal deals to gain market dominance, which Statcounter estimates at nearly 87% market share globally in April. But company executives argued the reason for the large market share is that it offers the best search engine.

If Mehta finds Google violated antitrust laws, he would schedule a "remedies" phase of the trial to determine next steps to follow that could increase competition in the search market, according to some reports.

At its NewFronts event last week, Google introduced a plan to rethink programmatic TV by having advertisers centralize their streaming ad buys through its web-focused demand-side platform, Display & Video 360 (DV360).

The company showcased DV360’s ability to stitch together fragmented streaming inventory sources.

Sean Downey, Google's president of Americas and global partners, estimates DV360 can reach 92% of U.S. connected smart TV households.

SAP used DV360 to reach 29 million unique viewers, with 5.6 million incremental views, according to one cited case study.

Google is showing it can replicate YouTube's strategy for ad sales across streaming TV with DV360's direct access to third-party inventory like Disney's streaming ad supply announced in March. It added measurement capabilities such as cross-device conversion reporting for connected TV campaigns. YouTube Shorts crossed the 70 billion daily views milestone in March, with 75% of those in the YouTube Partner Program generating revenue through new video formats.

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI), no surprise, will become the backbone of several new Display & Video 360 features launching within months. Audience Persona will generate a combination of audience demographics that matches an advertiser or programmer's goals.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's IAB Tech Lab will collaborate with Google to build new standards and contribute to the Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) protocol, which provides a privacy-focused way to secure and reconcile first-party data.

Kristen O'Hara, vice president of agency, platforms & client solutions, called it the "future of ad buying."

Since transparency, per O'Hara, is a responsibility for Display & Video 360, Google launched experiment center, a tool that allows marketers to test strategies and optimize the ways to use Google AI. Its streamlined dashboard offers immediate insights and enables data-driven decisions.

The experiment center goes beyond conversions to provide a view across the entire advertising funnel, from reach and brand lift, to engagement.

Google also last week told marketers in an email it would start automatically pausing low-activity keywords.

Beginning in June, the company will consider positive keywords in search ad campaigns “low-activity,” defined as keywords created more than 13 months ago that have registered zero impressions.

Anthony Higman, Adsquire CEO, posted the email on X. With a similar perspective, but in different words, he described how agencies and marketers who know what it takes to run a campaign should already have deleted a long time ago the keywords and ads that register zero low-activity impressions a long time ago.