Antitrust & Regulatory

The Google ad tech antitrust saga is entering its final chapter, but the regulatory story is far from over. As the DOJ case nears conclusion, industry observers and the FTC are already drawing lessons from it to apply to the next major target: Amazon. AdExchanger and Digiday both noted this week that the antitrust fight is pivoting toward AI, with regulators increasingly concerned about how dominant platforms are leveraging AI capabilities to entrench market power in new ways — search, content licensing, and ad targeting alike. The FTC's pursuit of Amazon's ad tech stack mirrors the logic used against Google's vertical integration across publisher tools, exchanges, and buyer-side platforms. The key question now is whether remedies crafted for a display-ad-era monopoly can translate to an AI-era one.