The recent high-profile advertising deal between online giants Google and Yahoo is under fresh scrutiny after an organisation representing several major national advertisers lodged an official complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice on the grounds of anticompetitive practice.
ANA lodges official antitrust complaint against Google and Yahoo\'s ad-share deal. Image: Google.
More specifically, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which represents the likes of Apple, The Coca-Cola Company, Exxon Mobil, and General Motors across 9,000 brands, posted via its official Web site on Sunday that it has dispatched a complaint to assistant attorney general Thomas Barnett of the Justice Department as a result of the Google and Yahoo ad deal.
According to the ANA, its letter centres on the possibility that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory,” and could also “diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising.”
In further explaining the complaint, the association said its move came as a result of conducting “comprehensive, independent analysis” into the deal along with various meetings with executives from both Google and Yahoo.
The deal between the two Internet giants was formed soon after Microsoft Corp. abandoned its protracted and aggressive takeover bid for Yahoo, which the software company had hoped to acquire in order to help reduce the gap between itself and ad-share market leader Google.
The online deal allows Google to sell ads displayed beside search results on Yahoo, and the ANA complaint arrives as the first significant broadside against it.
When the deal was officially announced back in May of this year, Google and Yahoo looked to avoid future punishment from antitrust regulators by voluntarily delaying its implementation by 100 days so that the Department of Justice could investigate the deal from an antitrust perspective.
While Google has not yet issued an official response to the complaint, Yahoo has commented in a Financial Times report that it is “disappointed with the ANA board’s decision,” and that the ad-share deal will only help create a “more robust” marketplace for its advertisers.
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