Senators introduce a new bill aimed at big ad tech

Big Tech is really just Big Ad Tech, it seems.

An antitrust bill introduced this week in Congress would require digital advertising companies to divest or sell parts of their businesses if they process more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions. That threshold would be comfortably (or, perhaps, in their cases, uncomfortably) cleared by the likes of Google and Meta.

The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act, or the AMERICA Act, was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and, according to him, is “functionally identical” to a bill he introduced last year, per AdExchanger.

• Specifically, the new bill would prohibit digital advertising companies from “owning more than one part of the digital ad ecosystem” if they meet that $20 billion threshold, according to the fact sheet shared by Lee and the bill’s sponsors.
• A demand-side platform couldn’t own a supply-side platform, and a supply-side platform couldn’t own a demand-side platform, for instance, and “buyers and sellers of digital advertising” couldn’t own either (unless it was for their own inventory), the sheet says.
• It would also require companies that process more than $5 billion in digital ad transactions to disclose their revenue streams, detailing where the money comes from, according to AdExchanger.

So far, the bill has bipartisan support, with co-sponsors including Senators Amy Klobuchar, Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth Warren, and Ted Cruz. The Department of Justice and state attorneys general would handle enforcement.

Big picture: Lately, it seems like Google hasn’t been able to catch a break. The company is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for operating what the DOJ alleges is an ad-tech monopoly. If this bill is passed without any changes and signed into law, it would, presumably, complicate things for the rest of Big Tech, too.—RB