Macquarie sees upside for ad tech companies if Alphabet loses court battle

Macquarie contends that the “trial of the century is not last month’s Google search case (which it lost), it’s this month’s DOJ lawsuit aiming to break up Google’s ad tech,” but while the analyst thinks this is a major event in online advertising, it is also described as “one that gets surprisingly little attention.” The DOJ trial against Google’s ad tech starts September 9 and after going through court filings to see how intent the DOJ appears to be to break up Google, the analyst says the firm would be “surprised if a financial settlement is acceptable.” The firm believes one reason stocks like Trade Desk (TTD), Magnite (MGNI) and Criteo (CRTO) have rallied this year is improved performance in light of moves Google has already made to help level the playing field and it thinks “the landscape could become a lot more amenable to independent ad tech companies” if the DOJ wins, telling investors that it sees upside to ad tech companies including the trio mentioned as well as PubMatic (PUBM) and LiveRamp (RAMP) in the event of “another Google lost court battle.”