Some of UK's biggest publishers criticize Google for failing to adequately explain its approach to blocking and filtering ads alongside COVID-19-related content
Financial Times : Tweets: @markdistef and @jason_kint Tweets: Mark Di Stefano / @markdistef : Google is being criticised for dragging feet when it comes to explaining how ad-blocking and filtering is hurting the news industry. It comes after a phone call between the UK government, publishers and ad-tech firms last week, details with @Laura_K_Hughes https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/... @jason_kint : Excellent probing of Google in UK. Press should know Google withdrew/failed its “brand safety” audit in U.S. last year unlike other firms. It would be good for @CommonsDCMS @julianknight15 @JoStevensLabour to ask Culture Sec about this today and for a deeper probe on why. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This complaint lands two weeks into the pandemic ad freeze, after a phone call between the UK government, publishers and ad-tech firms last week failed to produce answers from Google on how its brand-safety filtering is suppressing ads next to COVID-19 coverage — revenue news publishers can least afford to lose right now. Critics on the call also flagged that Google withdrew or failed its U.S. brand-safety audit last year, unlike other ad-tech firms, and are pressing the DCMS committee to probe it.
The UK grievance is an early skirmish in what becomes a multi-front fight: Google later threatens to cut off European publishers from its ad tools if they block reader-data harvesting, and by early 2022 the European Publishers Council files an EU antitrust complaint over its ad practices — the same conduct the UK CMA formally objects to in 2024.
First-order effects
- UK publishers are losing COVID-19-related ad revenue to opaque blocking and filtering rules Google won't explain, with the UK government now involved via last week's call and pressure building on the DCMS committee to investigate.
Second-order effects
- Google's leverage becomes explicit within months: it tells European publishers it will cut them off from its ad tools if they restrict data harvesting, while its privacy-driven tracker-blocking plan feeds the U.S. antitrust probe as publishers argue the playing field is rigged.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, publisher complaints about ad-tech opacity harden into formal regulatory findings — the EU complaint and the CMA's 2024 objection that Google used display-ad dominance to favour its own ad tech — shifting ad tech from self-regulated brand safety to antitrust-enforced accountability.
The trend: Publisher grievances over Google's opaque ad filtering and data practices are escalating from private calls into formal antitrust action across the UK, EU and US.