Distinct Customers. This factor does not support a search ads market, as advertisers who purchase search ads also purchase other ad types, including social media and display ads.
Distinct Prices. Search ads and display ads use different pricing models. Search ads are sold using a cost-per-click metric, such that advertisers pay only if a user clicks on a search ad. FOF ¶ 186. Display ads, on the other hand, generally use a cost-per-mille metric (i.e., cost per 1,000 impressions, or views). FOF ¶ 199. This means that advertisers are charged each time a display ad is posted, irrespective of whether a user clicks on the ad.
These different pricing approaches are consistent with the channels’ different purposes. Search ads can be priced per click, as an ad click is in some sense indicative of the ad’s effectiveness in satisfying a user’s expressed intent. The effectiveness of display ads is more difficult to measure, as users click on them with less frequency. FOF ¶¶ 228, 230. The record contains almost no evidence as to pricing of social media ads.
Google argues that distinct pricing alone is “insufficient to confine a market to search ads, particularly in light of the evidence that different types of ads are priced similarly when adjusted for the outcomes advertisers seek to achieve.” GCL ¶ 30. True. But neither U.S. Plaintiffs nor the court have rested solely on distinct pricing in defining a market for search advertising.
Google’s Authorities. Google cites Berlyn v. The Gazette Newspapers, an unpublished Fourth Circuit case, to argue that all digital ads belong in the same relevant market. GTB at 17. There, the plaintiffs attempted to establish a market consisting of “legal and commercial advertising services provided by weekly community newspapers” and a single weekly section in the Washington Post dedicated to local news. 73 F. App’x 576, 582 (4th Cir. 2003). The court rejected that market based on the minimal evidence presented: (1) a single advertising flier touting the efficacy of print ads in local publications relative to radio and TV ads and (2) a Washington
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