Google has reportedly offered to sell its advertising marketplace AdX in an effort to end an ongoing antitrust investigation brought up by European Union’s regulators. However, the move was rejected as the European Publishers Council deemed it “insufficient”.
According to Reuters, the EU publishers believe a major divesting effort is needed from Google in order to address its conflict of interest and overwhelming reach across all aspects of the ad industry.
“As we have said before, the European Commission’s case about our third-party display advertising products rests on flawed interpretations of the ad-tech sector, which is fiercely competitive and rapidly evolving. We remain committed to this business,” a spokesperson for Google said in a statement.
AdX is Google’s ad exchange platform that allows publishers to offer their ad space to advertisers via real-time bidding.
European Publishers Council brought up the issue of Google favoring its own advertising services last year. This launched an antitrust investigation by the European Commission, with the first decision expected to arrive by the end of the year.
As Reuters notes, Google’s offer to sell AdX was the first time the company offered to sell its assets in order to settle the antitrust case. Google is already facing a suit in the United States with antitrust authorities pushing for the sale of the ad management platform Google Ad Manager, part of which is AdX.