Brinkema Unseals Google Ad Tech Order: Prebid, 6-Year Monitor

Judge Leonie Brinkema's 106-page remedies opinion in the Google ad tech antitrust case came out of seal on Tuesday, unredacted and exactly as written, after neither side flagged confidential material during the 14-day review window. The order takes effect globally in 60 days.

Google has to build API integrations wiring AdX and DFP into Prebid, the open-source header bidding framework. It must submit AdX bids to rival publisher ad servers "on the same terms as DFP gets them," share real-time win-and-loss bid data with publishers, and stop AdWords from bidding directly into DFP or favoring Google's own ad tech. The integrations, AdExchanger's Allison Schiff writes, must be "functionally equivalent." The language is meant to stop Google from shipping something technically compliant but deliberately worse.

The DOJ had asked for more. It wanted DFP's auction logic fully open-sourced and a 15-year technical monitor. Brinkema said structural remedies were "neither realistic nor needed" and cut the monitor to six years, with full access to Google's employees, systems and source code. Google is only required to hand over technical documentation explaining how DFP picks winners.

DV360 walked away untouched. The court found insufficient connection to anticompetitive conduct, even though Project Poirot, Google's 2017 program that had DV360 "systematically cut bids on rival exchanges by as much as 90 percent" while still submitting full-price bids through AdX, is named in the opinion as a further mechanism of competitive suppression.

The DOJ sued in January 2023; the trial ran in 2024. The behavioral template Brinkema has now written is the kind of document that will get pulled apart across the pending Big Tech antitrust docket.