CCI probe puts spotlight on Google’s ad tech dominance in India

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has once again turned its gaze toward Google, and this time the target is the search giant’s ad tech stack. The trigger? A complaint filed by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF), a body of independent Indian advertisers and tech entrepreneurs who argue that the lack of transparency in Google’s programmatic advertising ecosystem is costing publishers and advertisers both money and choice.

This isn’t a minor skirmish in the margins. India’s digital ad market was worth between ?49,000–?53,000 crore in 2024, and it’s expected to grow even further this year. Within that pie, Google and Meta together control an overwhelming share, with Google’s dominance extending far beyond Search into the plumbing of digital advertising itself. Through Google Ad Manager, AdX, Display & Video 360, and the ubiquitous Campaign Manager, the company controls every link in the chain, from where the ad is served to how it is auctioned, bought, and measured.

The numbers underline just how entrenched that dominance is. Google India Pvt Ltd reported FY24 revenue of roughly ?5,518–?5,921 crore, with profit after tax of around ?1,425 crore, up 26% and 6% respectively. Separate disclosures peg gross ad revenue at ?31,221 crore for the year. Its cloud arm, Google Cloud India, brought in another ?2,010 crore. And Alphabet isn’t easing off the throttle: AI Mode has launched in India, AI Overviews now reach over 2 billion monthly users globally, and there’s a $6 billion data centre investment in Andhra Pradesh in the pipeline to feed AI and cloud demand locally.

The ADIF’s complaint hits on a recurring theme in global antitrust debates: what happens when the market leader is also the market maker. If the same company operates the ad server, runs the exchange, and controls the demand-side platform, it effectively sits on both sides of the auction, with full visibility into bids, prices, and inventory. That, according to the ADIF, is a recipe for conflicts of interest, opaque pricing, and unfair preference for the company’s own ad inventory.

Shradha Agarwal, Co-founder and Global CEO of Grapes Worldwide, says that’s exactly what Indian advertisers face. “Looking at the dominance of Google in the ad ecosystem, it is very unlikely that Indian advertisers are aware of the exact cost breakdowns, fees, or margins of the campaigns. There is a lack of price transparency, making it challenging for advertisers to get a fair understanding of the cost at each step. It is very difficult to gauge the ad spend that goes to the publisher and how much is reserved for Google’s various services.

In addition to this, experts say ideally there should be fair treatment of all media and publishers by the ad platform, but Google Ad Server tends to prioritize inventory from its own server, thereby taking an advantageous position as compared to others. This, in turn, could disrupt the advertiser’s chances of reaching their target audience across websites and apps.

The ADIF’s complaint taps into a wider undercurrent: Indian brands are beginning to ask harder questions about the mechanics of their ad spends, and regulators (emboldened by precedents from the EU, US, and Australia) are more willing to poke at the black boxes of Big Tech. But India is also a market where Google has invested heavily, grown consistently, and embedded itself into the fabric of business operations.

For publishers, Agarwal notes, the stakes are just as high. “A transparent and fair ad auction is another advantage publishers will be able to avail from the move,” she says, adding that scrutiny could give them “better control over prices and ad inventories” and a “free hand over their revenue optimization.”

Google, for its part, has consistently argued that its technology benefits advertisers and publishers by delivering better results at lower costs than the alternatives. That’s a point Vibhor Mehrotra, Managing Partner at Innocean, doesn’t entirely dismiss.

“If Google provides the CPMs along with quality deliveries in the costs which are within business requirements for the brands, then why would they have a question for transparency? Aside from these scale platforms like Google and other walled gardens, none of the other platforms have the ability to provide desired outcomes in that cost which is mostly 30-40% cheaper than the other open web platforms,” he says.

Still, he points out that the ownership of “complete adtech from ad servers, exchanges to DSPs along with tracking with CM” has been with Google for many years, and that this creates a practical bind for publishers: switching away often means selling less inventory.

His reading of international precedent is instructive: in April 2025, Google won the advertiser-focused half of a similar case in the US/UK, but lost the publisher-focused half. If the CCI enforces remedies such as de-bundling the ad server, DSP, and exchange, “platforms and advertisers may access a more varied ecosystem” with “clearer reporting on auction mechanisms and fees” and potentially “better pricing.” The trade-off in the short term? A more fragmented stack that advertisers will have to learn to navigate.

That fragmentation, argues Bala Kumaran, Founder & Director of BrandStory, may be exactly what India needs. “For far too long, Indian advertisers have operated in an ecosystem where transparency is more of a buzzword than a reality. Google's dominance across the ad server, exchange, and DSP layers essentially means one player controls the entire funnel from demand to delivery. That creates significant opacity in pricing and decision-making, especially for small to mid-sized advertisers who lack the leverage of large-scale deals.”

He frames the CCI probe as overdue course correction. “Increased regulatory scrutiny is not just a requirement, but it's a responsibility that has existed for a long time. For emerging platforms, regional publishers, and independent tech providers, it was Google's monopoly that has been a bottleneck. This scrutiny could serve as a motivation for greater diversification in India’s programmatic ecosystem and with encouraging innovation, partnerships, and local solutions which are tailored to our market’s unique dynamics. It’s time we reimagine an adtech landscape that’s fairer, more accountable, and inclusive for all players, not just for the big players.”

That tension will define what happens next. If the CCI follows the more aggressive playbooks from Europe or the UK, we could see enforced separation of ad tech components, mandated transparency in auction reporting, and a level playing field for competing exchanges and DSPs. That would be a seismic shift in how digital advertising works in India. On the other hand, if remedies are watered down, the status quo may hold, albeit under greater public scrutiny.

Either way, this is not just about one company’s margins. It’s about the future architecture of India’s digital economy, and whether it’s shaped by open competition or by a handful of walled gardens. And as every advertiser, publisher, and platform in the ecosystem knows, architecture determines who gets the best view, and who ends up staring at the back wall.