"The Day the Brands Broke Down the Garden Walls"

Check-out this great WSJ article, written by Mike Shields, along with the video below explaining why #IndependenceMatters

TubeMogul Calls Google Anti-Competitive in New Ad Campaign

By @MIKE SHIELDS 

The advertising technology firm TubeMogul believes that Google doesn’t play fair with marketers, and it is taking its message to the streets of New York and San Francisco.

Starting this week, the video-focused ad company will roll out an ad campaign aimed at advertising executives which charges Google with not always having the best interests of its marketing partners at heart. The campaign will use sharp language painting the search giant as having a “conflict of interest” and “misaligned business incentives.”

The planned two-month ad effort will feature outdoor signage placed near top ad agencies in New York and San Francisco, as well as print ads in select trade magazines, and Web video ads targeted at people who work in the ad business. The campaign directs people to visit a page on TubeMogul’s website which features “A Manifesto For Independence.”

That manifesto reads “Google has made a conscious decision to wall itself off from the rest of the industry.”

Google declined to comment on the campaign.

TubeMogul is highlighting a point of view that bubbles below the surface in the online ad world--that Google operates as a “walled garden.” That means, in the eyes of some ad buyers and marketing executives, that Google uses its clout to force brands to buy ads using Google’s technology and rules, whether they like it or not.

For example, some advertisers complain that Google makes it hard for marketers to use their own data and ad buying technology when buying ads on Google properties. Others complain that Google has been reluctant to allow marketers to use preferred third parties to track how ad campaigns perform, or to prevent against ad fraud, for example.

Starting this year, Google decided to limit the number of ways that advertisers can buy ads on YouTube. That cut off some companies like TubeMogul from buying YouTube ads via a particular programmatic channel, something that TubeMogul protested at the time.

According to TubeMogul Chief Executive Brett Wilson, that decision was just one of many moves by Google over the past few years that have been anti-advertiser--which collectively sparked the company’s decision to run the ad campaign.

“We want to make sure that advertisers understand that when you work with Google they’re not always working in [brands’] best interest,” he said. “The more brands spend the more Google builds up walls. So many of their moves over the last year were so egregious.”

According to Mr. Wilson, those egregious moves include Google making it difficult for brands to use third parties to track ad viewability or to simply gauge how many people were exposed to a video ad campaign.

Of course, others in the industry don’t share Mr. Wilson’s complaints and see Google as a big company using its might to conduct shrewd business.

“I don’t think about the way they operate as being constrictive,” said Jeremy Wacksman, chief marketing officer at online real estate firm Zillow. “It’s always been incumbent upon us to make the best use of the tools they give us and stitch all the data available together.”

It’s worth noting that advertisers continue to pump money into Google’s ad products. For example, during the most recent holiday shopping period, Google said the volume of video ads sold through programmatic software doubled year-over-year. Plus, Google announced in November that it would allow brands to use more third parties to track ad viewability on YouTube.

But Mr. Wilson has a like-minded ally in Ron Amram, senior media director at Heineken USA, who has previously been outspoken about Google’s muscle.

Mr. Amram said that Google does not let Heineken employ its ad-fraud-prevention vendor of choice in ad campaigns. And on YouTube, Heineken isn’t able to track how many people end up seeing its ads, he contends.

“They’ve lost the trust of the ad world,” he said.

Write to Mike Shields at [email protected]