The Google adtech cases in the US and EU: A new order in digital advertising?

  • Panel
  • Grande Halle
  • Friday 22.05 — 16:00 - 17:15

Organising Institution

Check My Ads

International

The mission of Check My Ads is to reboot the business model of the internet. We bring transparency and accountability to the notoriously opaque and purposefully complex digital advertising ecosystem. The global advertising industry is projected to be worth $1 trillion USD and is among the world’s largest unregulated industries.
  • Academic 1
  • Business 2
  • Policy 3
Google, the world’s second most profitable company, has been found to have abused its dominant position in the online advertising intermediation (“adtech”) market in both the United States and the European Union. These cases have unfolded in parallel on both sides of the Atlantic and have become landmark competition proceedings in the digital economy. Over the years, Google’s conduct has shown a pattern of strategic adaptation, morphing from one anticompetitive practice to another to maintain control over the industry’s core infrastructure. With remedy decisions expected soon, this is a pivotal moment to take stock of what has happened, what these decisions will actually change, and what they imply for the future of online advertising and digital markets more broadly. This panel examines whether these interventions mark a genuine structural turning point or business as usual.

Questions to be answered

  1. What are the key findings of the US antitrust ruling and the European Commission's decision regarding Google's adtech business, and where do the two jurisdictions converge or diverge in their analysis?
  2. What does the current state of competition in online advertising look like, and what motivated complaints against Google in the EU?
  3. What would it actually take to make the online advertising ecosystem genuinely competitive, and who stands to benefit depending on which path is chosen?
  4. Beyond these cases, what broader structural challenges remain in the online advertising market, and are we heading toward a new order or business as usual?

Moderator

Lex Zard

Check My Ads - International

Aleksandre Zardiashvili (Lex Zard) is Policy Director of Check My Ads and a legal scholar specialising in EU digital policy and online advertising. He earned his PhD at Leiden University and is the 2024-2025 Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Carr Centre of Human Rights Policy.

Speaker

Arielle Garcia

Check My Ads - International

Arielle Garcia is the chief operating officer at Check My Ads, where she oversees the organization’s research and policy programs. Before joining Check My Ads, she spent a decade in the ad industry, most recently as chief privacy and responsibility officer at global media agency, where she advised 100+ brands on the evolving digital landscape. In 2021, Arielle was inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement, and holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law

Speaker

Alexandros Papanikolaou

European Commission - Europe

Alexandros Papanikolaou is a competition law specialist in the Antitrust: IT, Internet & Consumer Electronics unit of DG Competition at the European Commission, where his areas of focus include the intersection of privacy, data protection, and competition policy. He studied law at Georgetown University Law Centre and earned an LLM in EU law from the College of Europe in Bruges, before practising European competition law in Brussels and joining the Commission in 2014.

Speaker

Tasos Stampelos

Mozilla - United States

Tasos Stampelos is Head of EU Public Policy and Government Relations at Mozilla, where he leads the organisation's engagement on European digital policy, with a particular focus on the intersection of privacy and competition. He previously held public policy and government affairs roles at Delivery Hero and the LEGO Group (covering the EMEA region), and earlier worked as a Senior Consultant at Political Intelligence and at Publyon in Brussels.