Google

Google has been working on a “conversational experience” with a small group of advertisers during the past few months that could once again change the way advertisers build ads. Through the small pilot, the company has heard feedback on how the ability to converse with the platform has helped to save time and inspire new ideas when creating campaigns. Based on this feedback, Google has made improvements to the conversational experience and in the coming months plans to move the project into a beta test phase in the U.S. and U.K., with both in English.

A Google executive on Tuesday admitted to changing the price of advertisements during the auction process to meet revenue targets. The company frequently changes the auction price for search ads and reserve pricing by as much as 5% on average. Jerry Dischler — Google VP-GM who oversees the company’s ad business — during Google’s antitrust trial told the U.S. Justice Department that for some queries, the company may have increased prices as much as 10%.

Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and others discussed artificial intelligence with lawmakers, as tech companies strive to influence potential regulations.

Google and the federal government will face off in a trial next week that could reshape how the tech giant is structured and the future of antitrust enforcement against tech platforms. The trial is kicking off nearly three years after the Department of Justice and a coalition of states’ attorneys general filed the complaint. The suit alleges Google has an anticompetitive monopoly over the search market.

AI-generated election ads on YouTube and other Google platforms that alter people or events must include a clear disclaimer located somewhere that users are likely to notice, the company said in an update to its political content policy.

Company, states agree to tentative deal to resolve Google Play monopoly allegations.

Facebook and YouTube are receding from their role as watchdogs against conspiracy theories ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Google today announced a new approach to improving ad clarity, with a “get-to-know-you” program that affects advertisers Google is less familiar with. The policy, Limited Ads Serving, aims to reduce the risk of scams and help prevent confusing and misleading ads.

Alphabet’s Google has been hit with a lawsuit in U.S. federal court seeking information about its multibillion-dollar deal with the National Football League to exclusively hold the broadcast rights for the Sunday Ticket package of televised professional games. Lawyers representing classes of residential and commercial business subscribers of Sunday Ticket filed the lawsuit on Monday in San Jose, Calif., federal court.

The National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs has recommended Google’s YouTube TV stop certain ad claims that tout its live TV streaming service as significantly cheaper than cable. Specifically, NAD decided YouTube TV should discontinue the comparative pricing claim in two commercials that say its service is “$600 less than cable” – following a challenge by cable operator Charter Communications. Without any promotional pricing or extras, YouTube TV costs $72.99 per month for a base plan that includes more than 100 channels. Google is appealing.

Google’s YouTube is tweaking features of NFL Sunday Ticket — less than a month before the football season kicks off — in the hopes of luring more paying customers to the pricey sports package.

The New York Times has decided not to join a group of media companies attempting to jointly negotiate with the major tech companies over use of their content to power artificial intelligence. The move is a major blow to efforts to Barry Diller’s efforts to establish an industry united front against Google and Microsoft.

Tired of relying on Big Tech to enable collaboration, peer-to-peer enthusiasts are creating a new model that cuts out the middleman. (That’s you, Google.)

The results for the April-June period released Tuesday by Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., reversed a financial downswing that had raised fears Google was losing its financial steam at the same time advances in artificial intelligence threatened to undercut the dominant search engine that powers its digital ad empire.

Amazon, Google and Meta are among the companies that announced the new commitments on Friday as they race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence.

The product, Google Genesis, pitched as a helpmate for journalists, has been demonstrated for executives at The New York Times, The Washington Post and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.

After the nation’s senate passed the Online News Act yesterday, Meta confirmed it will remove news content from Facebook and Instagram for all Canadian users, but it remained unclear whether Google would follow suit for its platforms.

The country’s largest newspaper chain said that Google’s power over ad technology has contributed to the decline of local news.

European Union regulators filed new antitrust charges against Google, which could lead to fines and orders for the company to change its business practices.

The company will pay more than 150 U.S. news publications to feature their content.

An unprecedented downturn in Google’s digital ad revenue – the company’s main moneymaker for more than 20 years – came into sharper focus Tuesday with the release of the January-Marcy results for its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc.

YouTube revealed the highly anticipated details of its new streaming plan for NFL Sunday Ticket on Tuesday, providing a win for fans who were shut out of the programming when it was aired by DirectTV by making the service available to anyone with web access. But it’s a win that comes at a hefty cost: The price for the out-of-market football game service is rising, the Google-owned YouTube said in a blog post. Fast-acting fans can get a $100 discount if they sign up for the service before June 6.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is rolling out tests that block access to news content for some Canadian users, the company confirmed on Wednesday, in what it says is a test run of a potential response to the government’s online news bill.

As the television industry looks for better ways to measure viewers, NBCUniversal wants the audience metrics used to buy and sell advertising to take into account the quality of the video and how much it engages consumers. NBCU on Wednesday is holding its annual pre-upfront presentation highlighting its data and technology capabilities for advertisers. This year’s event is called One23.

The Justice Department is apparently giving broadcasters some help with one of their top Washington priorities — Big Tech’s dominance as an ad platform. As expected, the DOJ on Jan. 24 said it was filing an antitrust suit against one of the biggest of Big Tech — Google parent Alphabet — over its online ad practices, a move that could lead to Google divesting its ad business and aid TV stations in what the NAB Broadcasters has called Big Tech’s “stranglehold” on digital advertising and ad rates.

The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog. It’s one of the company’s biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.

The tech giant has so far taken steps to streamline without mass layoffs, but employees are girding for deeper cuts.

Google and Meta, known together in the ad industry as the “duopoly,” are expected to bring in less than half of all U.S. digital advertising this year for the first time since 2014. The duo’s ad dominance has for years made both companies the target of antitrust investigations and lawsuits. While they still tower over digital rivals, their momentum is starting to slow as competition moves in.