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Google Trinity Mirror Technology

Google has tweaked its auction to no longer favour its own bids over competition

By Sean Larkin, Programmatic Reporter

April 1, 2017 | 2 min read

Publishers rejoice, Google is set to relinquish the so-called ‘last look’ its own DoubleClick AdExchange had on auctions that mean it is able to bid on every impression and consequently always outbid others.

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Google has tweaked its auction to no longer favour its own ads over competition.

The u-turn was revealed by Ad Exchanger, which posted a document that outlined the change for Google’s Exchange Bidding in Dynamic Allocation.

While the move is still in beta, the online giant’s director of product management Jonathan Bellack confirmed the overhaul to the trade publication. “We are collecting the price each exchange would pay, including AdX, and then putting it in a unified auction where the highest price wins,” Bellack said.

Previously, the DoubleClick AdExchange would wait for other exchanges to submit their bids before making its own, a dynamic that left it always in a position to outbid its rivals. By having the “last look”, Google’s exchange could simply bid $5.01 when the highest bid for a particular user from another exchange was $5. However, under the new auction news it would not be able to use that advantage to secure the bid.

The move could be the start of a change in the way Google works with adtech partners. Exchanges and publishers have listed Google’s ‘last look’ as one of their chief concerns, with Trinity Mirror’s head of programmatic Amir Malik treating header bidding as a way for his business to resist Google dominating ad inventory.

Google Trinity Mirror Technology

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