The U.S. DOJ’s Dual Cases Against Google Are Irrelevant to the Future. Here’s Why.

The following byline by Digital Remedy CEO Mike Seiman was featured in AdMonsters. In it, he explains why the U.S. DOJ’s cases against Google will not affect the future of digital advertising. and how AI, evolving search behaviors, and diversifying CTV ad spend could reshape the landscape.

All eyes this year have been on the U.S. Department of Justice’s dual anti-trust cases against Google. And as of this writing, it’s one down, one to go. The courts have declared Google’s search engine anti-competitive. In the case to determine whether Google’s advertising business is a monopoly, court arguments wrapped up in a mere three weeks. The final results of these cases could have a transformative impact on the digital ad landscape – or at least that’s the conventional line of thought.

But a close look at Google’s strengths and weaknesses reveals that these lawsuits are irrelevant to the future of Google and the digital ad industry itself. Google’s domination of search and advertising isn’t a certainty – and industry leaders should plan for the future accordingly. We can see a few key trends where Google will be challenged to stay ahead of the pack in the next five to 10 years: the evolution of AI search, AI-powered hypertargeting of digital ads, wide adaptation of voice and visual search tools, and ad spend surging into CTV platforms. 

AI is already transforming search experience and monetization

For over a year, we’ve been hearing about how AI will upend search and discovery as we know it. The upending is underway: AI search delivers direct, conversational answers to simple and complex queries alike. For the user, AI circumvents the task of sifting through lists of results to find the most relevant links. AI makes search smarter, and more intuitive and interactive for the user. It’s also becoming more personal, by processing large amounts of data to better understand user preferences and context. 

In turn, AI’s upsides can easily damage Google’s ability to monetize search. For advertisers, what’s the incentive for paying top dollar to be shown high up in search results, if consumers are shifting toward AI tools that circumvent lists of links? Right now, there’s room for an insurgent company to develop an AI search tool that wins out as the public’s favorite, or to propose sustainable strategies for monetizing AI search. 

AI is democratizing data and reshaping the programmatic market 

AI also threatens Google’s outsized share of the programmatic ad market. Other leading programmatic platforms are already leveraging AI to enhance ad targeting and automate previously manual workflow processes. This improves efficiency for adtech vendors, delivering more accurate and valuable insights from relatively limited amounts of data – which in turn challenges the market position Google has gained by virtue of the immense volumes of data it processes. And a more competitive programmatic market will bring increased focus on transparency, with advertisers gaining the clout to demand clearer metrics – which will put Google in the hot seat to improve reporting and accountability.

Expect CTV ad spend to diversify

Google has always been able to offer advertisers uniquely large volumes of data, which, thanks to AI, isn’t quite the differentiator it has been. The question is whether YouTube’s footprint will be enough to guarantee continued video ad dominance. AI is poised to empower YouTube competitors to drive more value from their own data, which will lead programmatic ad spend to surge across streaming platforms. Roku emerges as a compelling competitor here: its own dominance in streaming allows it to leverage TV search data to offer personalized content recommendations. This is a powerful move for discovery in streaming. Meanwhile, Roku is shifting toward ad-supported models, and its proprietary data positions it as a potential rival to Google’s ad-driven search dominance.

Voice assistants make for a more intuitive search experience

Voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are reshaping search behavior today, with expanded voice search capabilities that have become part of daily life for millions of consumers. And Amazon’s ever-growing ad business, where search ads can be integrated directly into its ecommerce and streaming inventory, enhances its ability to compete with Google. In product discovery, Amazon is increasingly becoming the go-to search engine, as it provides a more intuitive and relevant product search experience. If, as prosecutors have suggested, Google used its own position in the search market to shirk on research and development that improves the search experience, they’ve left the door open for their top competitors to start moving in on their business.

The future is unwritten, and it might not be written by Google

At this point, it’s still early to predict specifically how or where consumers’ search behavior will evolve and diversify. Regardless, Google will need to remain vigilant and react wisely to marketplace trends. Google faces search challenges not only from Amazon, but also from the likes of TikTok – a popular channel for search, product discovery, and lifestyle-related queries, especially among younger users. Google does command wide user loyalty, based on familiarity and its perception of reliability for general searches. But as search becomes more specialized and diversified, user loyalty will become less and less of a given.