The AGCM alleges the company has a dominant position in the market for display advertising.
Italy adds itself to the list of competition investigations: Google has recently been under scrutiny from competition authorities in several countries, including the US with the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice on 20 October 2020. Now the Italian competition authority, the AGCM, has launched an investigation into Google for an alleged abuse of its dominant position in the market for display advertising in Italy. It’s alleged that Google may have violated European law through its use of data for the design of display advertising campaigns.
Unrivalled targeting capabilities: The AGCM questions Google’s ‘discriminatory’ use of the large amount of data it collected through different applications, preventing rivals in the online advertising markets from competing effectively. Google allegedly refused to provide its competitors with tools such as Google ID decryption keys, while at the same time using tracking elements to achieve a targeting capability that competitors are unable to replicate. The AGCM considers all the services provided through Google ID (including the Android mobile OS, the Chrome browser, Gmail, Maps, among others), as tools to make a detailed profiling of the users to whom advertising is targeted.
Why it matters: The AGCM notes that online advertising in Italy in 2019 was worth more than €3.3bn (representing 22% of the revenues of the media sector), and that display advertising alone generated a turnover of more than €1.2bn. In terms of value, online advertising sales were the second most important source of revenue for the media sector in 2019. The AGCM has not given a deadline for the conclusion of the investigation.
