New York Judge Allows Publishers to Claim Over $3.2 Billion from Google
Federal Judge P. Kevin Castel in the Southern District of New York ruled on Wednesday evening that USA Today Co., parent company of the Daily Mail, Daily Mail General and Trust, and a group of major publishers can claim over $3.2 billion in damages from Google for monopolizing the advertising technology market.
He allowed a jury to examine how Google's advertising trading platform AdX harmed major publishers. A class action lawsuit involving about 5,000 publishers can pursue approximately $1.7 billion. USA Today and Daily Mail are suing separately, allowed to seek about $900 million and $600 million, respectively. Experts estimate Gannett's damages at about $901 million and Daily Mail at about $600 million. The class action expert calculates damages of about $1.72 billion up to March 31, 2024, with further accumulation thereafter.
This is not a final payout. Publishers still need to prove the causal relationship between the damages and the relevant actions in court, as well as the amounts. The opinion spans 88 pages, rejecting Google's request to dismiss the main claims before trial and sending the AdX-related claims to the jury.
The ruling is not entirely unfavorable. Castel supported Google's dismissal of Gannett and Daily Mail's claims under New York General Business Law, also dismissing claims from The Progressive and Inform's federal antitrust claims. Google stated that the ruling dismissed claims from some publishers using another advertising purchasing tool, while the remaining claims will be defended in court.
The claims are anchored in the advertising exchange segment, not search rankings. Publishers accuse AdX and related bundling of raising transaction commissions and lowering net revenue from advertising inventory. The class action covers about 5,000 publishers, while the two separately suing media outlets broke down their amounts into $900 million and $600 million, indicating that major publishers chose to calculate independently rather than waiting for a collective distribution.
The buyers are publishers seeking refunds for advertising technology commissions, while the sellers are Google, which still controls AdX. This is a litigation-driven contingent liability, not a shift in advertising budgets. If the jury supports the claims, beneficiaries will be USA Today, Daily Mail, and class members. The pressure is on Google's historical commission from its advertising technology business and the bargaining position of publishers still bringing inventory to AdX. The ruling itself does not change existing bidding but opens up compensation calculations.
$3.2 billion is the maximum claimable amount, not a determined amount. Publishers using another purchasing tool have been excluded from this round of claims.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Google acquired DoubleClick for about $3.1 billion in 2007, integrating publishers' ad servers and ad trading platforms into one company. Since then, AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers have been accused by publishers of bundling: to use Google's servers, inventory must be prioritized into AdX. In the 2010s, publishers used header bidding to bypass this priority, while Google pulled traffic back with transaction speed and demand advantages. In 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the publisher ad server and ad trading market. Castel is addressing private damages for the same set of behaviors, not a new liability determination.
The flow of money is through the commissions in advertising fees. When publishers sell an impression, AdX and related tools take the price difference, with net revenue going to the media. Experts estimate Gannett's losses at about $901 million, Daily Mail at about $600 million, and 5,000 publishers at about $1.72 billion by March 31, 2024. These figures still need to go through the jury. What Google can mobilize is the dismissal of state law claims, exclusion of publishers using other purchasing tools, and continued court battles over causation. Publishers can leverage existing monopoly rulings as a backdrop, but private cases still need to prove their damages separately.
A parallel is the class action on credit card interchange fees after 2010, where merchants pursued network commissions rather than whether card organizations existed. It is also similar to the EU's penalties against Google for advertising technology in 2023, with the difference being that the EU penalized behavior while U.S. publishers seek historical revenue. The industry position is in a control phase. The technology stack for ad trading has not changed, and the right to compensation has been placed in the jury's hands. The AI summary lawsuit on the search side was dismissed in another court on the same day, indicating that publishers are advancing further on advertising commissions than on traffic sharing.
Structurally, this is a transfer of pricing power. The net price of display advertising has long been determined by the party that simultaneously controls both the server and the exchange. The mechanism is that bundling keeps alternative exchanges out of inventory, and commissions do not need to be compared with competitors. Private lawsuits cannot dismantle AdX but can calculate the price differences already taken as damages. If the jury adopts the expert figures, pricing power will not immediately shift to publishers; historical commissions will first turn into contingent compensation.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Those who can set commissions first determine others' net income.
Monopoly rulings open liability, and the jury then assigns amounts.
The same traffic on the search side and the ad side is not the same account.