This came after she ruled its sell-side ad tech offering a monopolistic play in late-2025, and it was the second such regulatory let-off in a 12-month window.

It was amid the accompanying gasps of anguish that Google’s detractors perused the eventual behavioral remedies handed down by the Eastern District of Virginia courtroom, hoping for a degree of consolation on Sept. 16, as more dejected parties questioned if there was even any point in trying to rein in the growing dominance of Big Tech in adland anymore.

As evidenced in Justice Brinkema’s decision, Justice Brinkema’s decision not to force the sale of Google’s market-leading ad exchange and/or ad server demonstrates how the ruling sought to alter the conditions of competition, not manufacture a specific outcome, i.e., the defenestration of GAM’s market share. 

The nub of the ruling is that the court won’t force a breakup of GAM, although Google must make strides to make its ad stack more interoperable and transparent, plus it must make any associated data more easily portable. 

Additionally, it must also dismantle its inbuilt commercial advantage (see below for a more detailed rundown).  

And it’s with this in mind that much attention has been paid to the proposed mechanisms in place to ensure Google’s compliance with the judgment, with the independent overseer bodies, dubbed “the monitor” and “the technical committee,” likely to be the subject of much scrutiny in the weeks, months and years ahead. 

However, first, let’s recap the key elements of the 106-page ruling, which aims to upend the established ad tech order and many publishers’ default primary source of ad funding. 

• No forced divestiture: Google keeps its ad exchange AdX and ad server DoubleClick for Publishers, a.k.a. DFP
• No more ‘tying’: A key concern in the Justice Department’s complaint, Google now can’t implement policies tying AdX and DFP
• Open up to rivals: Google must open up AdX to DFP rivals, bringing parity to how AdX bids are made available to them in DFP in both private and open auctions
• Prebid integration: Google must make AdX interoperable with the open-source ad server within approximately 15 months 
• Data portability: Google must let publishers access historical/configurationdata from AdX and DFP, and export to rival ad servers, including technical support 
• AdX data availability: Google must give publishers AdX bid data, including winning and losing bids, giving rival ad servers optimization information
• Auction transparency: Google must provide detailed auction mechanics, including documentation on how DFP selected a winning ad, including candidates’ prices, direct deals, programmatic bids, and bid adjustments
• No more auction advantages: Google must not reimplement first- or last-look advantages, plus it must depreciate unified pricing rules for indirect transactions
• Restrict buy-side favoritism: Google’s search advertising offering – formerly known as AdWords, now part of Google Ads – cannot favor Google-backed ad tech when bidding for open web inventory, including the prohibition of an AdWords-DFP integration
• Independent oversight: The formation of a monitor and technical committee, with the parties required to submit a status report within 90 days of the judgment taking effect, plus further reports as ordered by the court

For many, a key part of the ruling was the architectural restriction, mandating that AdWords cannot establish a direct bidding integration with DFP, although it can integrate directly with rivals, such as Prebid. 

The goal of this stipulation is to prevent Google from creating a new privileged connection between its own buy- and sell-side operations, while permitting integrations that could increase competition outside Google’s stack. 

For some, this is evidence that Justice Brinkema, who took more than 9 months to deliberate the rulings, attempted to deliver a judgment of prescience and impact within the confines of the Sherman Act. Indeed, free market/Google advocates would likely point to how Justice Brinkema’s rulings were an echo of her counterpart’s ruling in the search antitrust case, where behavioral remedies were favored over the forced divestiture of Google’s web browser Chrome.

However, several Digiday sources recently remarked that trying to rein in Big Tech’s growing dominance in adland was, ultimately, a losing battle, and wondered whether the DOJ’s win in the Brinkema case was a Pyrrhic victory.

Speaking with Digiday ahead of the specifics of the ad tech remedies rulings being made public, one source, who declined to be named, said GAM had “done its job” of subjugating the rest of the paid-for media landscape. 

“Giving GAM away (essentially for free) was Google’s way of making itself in charge of the entire food supply,” added the source, who requested anonymity in exchange for candor.

“The huge majority of publishers use GAM as their primary gateway for selling ads, and it all runs through their pipes; it has control of the data flow and identity (to an extent)… and that’s a huge challenge,” added the source, who maintained the court should have insisted on a divestiture of GAM, if any actual change was to be realized.

Meanwhile, Alan Chapell, a privacy attorney who also fronts The Monopoly Report, said Google is likely one step ahead in blunting the commercial impact of any court rulings.  

“This ruling will make things better, and it probably will for a period, but you know, Google is just so good at all this stuff that you know they’ve already figured out the next move,” he said, speaking with Digiday ahead of the Sept. 15 rulings. 

When quizzed on the meaningful nature of the Brinkema rulings, both sources said Google would have vigorously contested any significant impact for years, using its lobbying influence to delay and limit a forced divestiture. 

In the wake of the Sept. 15 rulings, TAU Marketing Solutions’ Robert Webster told Digiday that while the remedies chip away at Google’s privileged pipes into GAM and AdX, more consideration must be paid to how its deeper moats around data, demand, and measurement (which are largely intact) must be addressed. 

“This is a solid structural tweak on the sell‑side pipe, but not an automatic yield windfall.

Google’s real power still sits in [its demand-side platform] DV 360, signals, and measurement — none of that is meaningfully broken here,” he added, claiming that the arrangements barely shift the competitive center of gravity.

He also remarked that interoperability requirements will affect GAM’s access moat in a shrinking open-web display market, but if DV360’s identity and measurement remain untouched, the real antitrust fight simply moves from open-web ads to CTV, in-app inventory, and demand-side control.

Meanwhile, Jay Friedman, a long-time media agency CEO now leading Cartograph, an entity helping brands understand the ad tech vendor landscape in the AI-first era, largely echoed these claims. He told Digiday that if publishers don’t see a noticeable difference in bid activity and yield after fully integrating AdX/Prebid, something is still wrong or not as intended. 

“In theory, the DV360 exclusion doesn’t impact the GAM/AdX preferences that caused much of this,” he claimed. “The question is if preferences will now shift and adapt to include DV 360 to circumvent any intended changes – the proof will be in the bidding.” 

Digiday quizzed Friedman, who was called to testify during the initial courtroom proceedings phase of the trial, on the

potential for Google to comply with the letter of these remedies while limiting their competitive impact, i.e., interoperability, data access, auction mechanics, or enforcement?

“The reason expert testimony was needed in this case is that the complexity and ability to obfuscate non-compliance are equally high,” he noted. “Buyers should ask themselves, ‘If I wanted to comply with the letter of this ruling yet still maintain an advantage, could I?’ Their answer should instruct them on how to proceed going forward.” 

For almost all parties consulted since the Sept. 17 rulings, the proof will be in the bidding: if Google’s rivals gain access to its pipes but not its advantages, the court may have changed the architecture of ad tech without changing who controls it.