{"id":1190139,"date":"2023-10-09T07:34:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T11:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1190139"},"modified":"2023-10-09T07:34:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T11:34:00","slug":"google-made-billions-with-secret-change-to-ad-auction-algorithm-witness-testifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1190139","title":{"rendered":"Google Made Billions With Secret Change to Ad-Auction Algorithm, Witness Testifies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An economist testified that Google made billions of dollars in extra ad revenue starting in 2017 \u2014 by making a secret change to its auction algorithm that bumped their revenues up 15%. Bloomberg reports:<\/p>\n<p>Michael Whinston, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Friday that Google modified the way it sold text ads via &#8220;Project Momiji&#8221; \u2014 named for the wooden Japanese dolls that have a hidden space for friends to exchange secret messages. The shift sought &#8220;to raise the prices against the highest bidder,&#8221; Whinston told Judge Amit Mehta in federal court in Washington. <\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s advertising auctions require the winner to pay only a penny more than the runner-up. In 2016, the company discovered that the runner-up had often bid only 80% of the winner&#8217;s offer. To help eliminate that 20% between the runner-up and what the winner was willing to pay, Google gave the second-place bidder a built-in handicap to make their offer more competitive, Whinston said, citing internal emails and sealed testimony by Google finance executive Jerry Dischler earlier in the case&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>About two-thirds, more than 60%, of Google&#8217;s total revenue comes from search ads, Dischler said previously, amounting to more than $100 billion in 2020. <\/p>\n<p>In 2021 Google was also accused of running &#8220;a secret program to track bids on its ad-buying platform,&#8221; according to the New York Post (citing reporting by the Wall Street Journal). A Texas-led antitrust suit accused Google &#8220;of using the information to gain an unfair market advantage that raked in hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to a report.&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd the Post&#8217;s article also mentioned &#8220;an alleged hush-hush deal in which Google allegedly guaranteed that Facebook would win a fixed percentage of advertising deals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<div class=\"share_submission\" style=\"position:relative\">\n<a class=\"slashpop\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Google+Made+Billions+With+Secret+Change+to+Ad-Auction+Algorithm%2C+Witness+Testifies%3A+https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F10%2F09%2F0639211%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/twitter_icon_large-303.png\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a class=\"slashpop\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F10%2F09%2F0639211%2Fgoogle-made-billions-with-secret-change-to-ad-auction-algorithm-witness-testifies%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/facebook_icon_large-152.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/23\/10\/09\/0639211\/google-made-billions-with-secret-change-to-ad-auction-algorithm-witness-testifies?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&amp;utm_medium=feed\">Read more of this story<\/a> at Slashdot.<\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Slashdot &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/23\/10\/09\/0639211\/google-made-billions-with-secret-change-to-ad-auction-algorithm-witness-testifies?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&amp;utm_medium=feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google Made Billions With Secret Change to Ad-Auction Algorithm, Witness Testifies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An economist testified that Google made billions of dollars in extra ad revenue starting in 2017 \u2014 by making a secret change to its auction algorithm that bumped their revenues up 15%. Bloomberg reports: Michael Whinston, a professor of economics &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1190139\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1190140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,110],"tags":[100],"class_list":["post-1190139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slashdot","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-slashdot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1190139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1190140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1190139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1190139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1190139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}