Written by Brook Schaaf

Few subtitles tell you exactly what you’re in for. Yield, by Ari Paparo, does: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance. Said dominance, indeed, monopoly, is in open-web display advertising, not paid search, though Google lost antitrust trials in both arenas. (The remedy in the search trial was published yesterday. TL;DR: No forced divestiture of Chrome. Commentary may follow in a future blurb.) The remedy trial for the open-web display advertising monopoly begins on September 22. This book covers the two decades leading up to the ad-tech trial and its guilty verdict earlier this year.

Yield is crowded with pivotal people and decisions in the history of ad tech. Paparo, now an industry journalist and host of the Marketecture podcast, apparently knows many of the major players personally, having worked at DoubleClick, then at Google after the acquisition. He provides a substantive account of the evolution of display ad tech and why things turned out as they did.

The book includes a comprehensive timeline of events from 2004 to the ruling in 2025, and simplified diagrams of display advertising auctions, including the Waterfall, AdXDynamic Allocation (First Look), Header Bidding (Last Look), and present-day Header and Open Bidding. 

Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with the mechanics or even the terms. As Paparo notes, the “way advertisements end up on web pages is surprisingly complex.” In brief, supply (ad slots) and demand (advertiser dollars) gradually became like selling and buying in the financial markets through what is known as RTB (Real-Time Bidding). Unlike regular financial markets, however, Google’s technology came to be on both sides AND in the middle of most ad buys. It used this position to its advantage and others’ disadvantage, claiming “irrationally high rent,” as quoted from an employee email.

Paparo’s summary of the judge’s 115-page ruling states: “The ad server is a monopoly. The ad exchange is a monopoly. The tie between the two products is an unlawful one. Publishers were harmed by the monopoly and deserve justice. Google’s market definition arguments were nonsense. Google’s legal arguments were invalid.” 

The offenses over the years are too many to list in detail, though Paparo captures the overall sentiment: “The litany of secret manipulations of auction mechanics by the gTrade team [a group inside of Google] would shock the advertising world when it became public in court documents in 2024.” Paparo quotes an anonymous former executive on one of the many secret projects called Global Bernanke: “That program was f***ing evil.” 

The book feels as though different paragraphs were written by different men, or perhaps by the same man in different moods. The sordid details are fairly, if dispassionately, recorded, though with various softening statements throughout. At one point, he generously notes: “Every observer seems to have a different view of these abuses.” He downplays privacy concerns: “There is little evidence that the data from the cookies has caused real-world harm, other than a general sense that they violate privacy or facilitate ‘surveillance capitalism,’ as some more radical advocates have dubbed it.” I suppose such will be the natural sympathies of a man with his background, though his attention does not extend beyond display ad tech and the walled gardens. 

There is nary a mention of affiliate. The word is literally not in the index. The closest Paparo gets is when he mentions Google divesting itself of DoubleClick’s search management division, Performics, after the acquisition. One would think the affiliate tracking platform that became Google Affiliate Network from around 2008 to 2013 would be a relevant part of the story. That it’s not may be the first lesson for affiliate marketing among several:

  • Whether the omission was because of a lack of familiarity with the channel or for another reason, affiliate marketing is overlooked when it should get a nod, especially in a book that contemplates non-Google options publishers and advertisers alike were desperate to find. The lesson for the affiliate channel is to better promote itself so as to have a seat at the table. 
  • The concept of display advertising auctions is simple…just like the concept of affiliate marketing is simple, until the clear picture in your mind flashes into an MC Escher drawing, then a spaghetti football. This served as a helpful reminder to me of how easily someone outside or even inside the space can be confused and steered away or awry. The lesson for the affiliate channel is to agree to basic and advanced terms and explanations that make it accessible to outsiders, including a fair rundown of controversial and fraudulent practices, which is a good segue to the last lesson. 
  • However bad you might think affiliate marketing is, the open web display advertising situation has got to be ten times worse. Setting aside misspent advertising dollars, relationships are often established and maintained under duress, with little transparency or trust. Testimony in the trial showed that a publisher removing Google’s AdX would likely see a 27.9% decrease in revenue compared to less than 1% from any competing exchange. Unsurprisingly, Google enjoyed a 99% retention rate and 86.5% share of the US market. As Paparo noted, changes Google made in 2019 were “absolutely infuriating” but publishers “could not switch.” The lesson for the affiliate channel is to be aware of the shortcomings of other channels as a point of reference. 

Of course, there is still the matter of wasted resources. On the advertiser side, all these vaunted mechanics, data exchanges, algorithms, and purported efficiencies haven’t ferreted out massive fraud. Consider a headline from Digiday last week: “$26.8 billion still wasted in programmatic despite MFA crackdown.” 

Affiliate is not even a secondary character in this story. Perhaps this is a mercy given the many distasteful doings of the actors involved. But our absence also has a cost; what is not remembered will not be recognized or rewarded. The lesson is clear: to avoid being erased from the broader narrative of digital advertising, affiliate marketing must claim its relevance. We have an opportunity to take the stage as a hero, not a villain, and perhaps provide a better yield for all involved.

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