CAT certifies £14 billion Adtech claim

05/06/24

On 5 June 2024, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) certified the Adtech proceedings.  Adtech concerns various technologies that intermediate between sellers of ads – such as a website publisher (e.g., The Times) or app developer – and buyers who wish to place digital ads on their ‘properties’.  Google has multiple dominant positions within the Adtech ‘stack’.  The collective action concerns website and app publishers who claim that Google abused its position by systematically favouring its own Adtech services, thus excluding rival ad exchanges and acting against the best interests of publishers.  The publishers claim that but for these abuses the commission they paid would have been lower and the yields achieved on their ads higher. 

The certification judgment touches on a number of interesting issues: (i) the relevance of the counterfactual to liability and causation and quantum; (ii) the use of a common counterfactual for multiple abuses; (iii) the need for certification to address “showstopper” points only; (iv) the CAT’s desire to minimise satellite litigation in CPO cases where possible; and (v) the demands that can reasonably be placed on the damages methodology pre-disclosure.

The judgment is here.