Google announces future changes to ad policy after consultations with French watchdog

Moscow, Jun 7 (Agency) Google announced on Monday plans to introduce some changes to its ad policy after consultations with the French Competition Authority (FCA), which slapped a fine of 220 million euros ($267 million) on it earlier. “We are committed to working proactively with regulators everywhere to make improvements to our products. That’s why, as part of an overall resolution of the FCA’s investigation, we have agreed on a set of commitments to make it easier for publishers to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies. We will be testing and developing these changes over the coming months before rolling them out more broadly,” Google said in a statement.

Google pledged to create a solution to guarantee equal access to data related to outcomes from the Ad Manager auction to all buyers participating in the ad exchange, including those using the Header Bidding technology. “We will further increase the flexibility of Google Ad Manager to meet the evolving needs of our partners, including allowing them to set custom pricing rules for ads that are in sensitive categories,” Google added. Google also confirmed commitment “not to share any bid from any Ad Manager auction participants with any other auction participant prior to completion of the auction.” “Additionally, we’ll give publishers at least three months’ notice for major changes requiring significant implementation effort that publishers must adopt, unless those are related to security or privacy protections, or are required by law,” the statement read on.