On 26 May 2022, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced an investigation into Google regarding the potential abuse of market power in the advertising technology sector. The focus of the investigation is the advertising technology intermediary sector ("ad tech stack"), which facilitates the sale of online advertising space between sellers (publishers) and buyers (advertisers). The CMA regards the sector as important due to the reliance of many businesses on advertising revenue to offer free content. The CMA will investigate whether Google's practices distort competition in three parts of the advertising technology sector, in which it owns the largest service provider. In particular, the investigation concerns demand-side platforms, advertising exchanges and publisher ad servers. Google is alleged to give an unfair competitive advantage to its own publisher ad servers, displaying more of its own advertisements, while also giving preferential treatment to its own advertisement exchanges.
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