Advertising is an intentionally complex system so that companies can clip the ticket at multiple stages throughout the process. Google should be broken up, but the whole ad tech system needs to go into the bin if these problems are going to ever get fixed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/02/15/how-muc...
Some companies like Google are incredible at this. Google is not a "monopoly" in this space. In fact the world has far too many Google equivalents but absolutely no one comes close to Google in generating top dollars for publishers. I am saying this after working for 10+ years competing against Google.
Of course it matters if a middleman is skimming off 70% of the revenue in a given market.
> it is incredibly efficient
On what planet is a loss of 70% of the resources to the matching process between buyers and sellers "incredibly efficient"?
> What matters is how much they are earning compared to the next best alternative.
Right, which is why it is illegal to prevent there from being a next best alternative via anti-competitive practices which is precisely was was proven in this trial after a detailed examination of the evidence.