The Justice Department’s complaint against Google on Tuesday called for the company to divest Google Ad Manager, a suite of tools including one that lets websites put ad space up for a sale and another that served as an ad marketplace that automatically matched advertisers with those publishers.
Ad industry executives say Google’s business in placing ads on websites it does not own gives Google valuable information on an ad’s effectiveness. If Google is forced to divest the tools that serve publishers, it would benefit competitors like Xandr, which is owned by Microsoft, that will still work with both sides of the ad-buying ecosystem, Mr. Bannister said.
The divested assets could result in Google losing key data that helps target ads to relevant consumers, he said.