[dchuk]

It's not a monopoly in practice, it's terrible customer service in practice. There are tons of different ad networks to work with, Google isn't the only option, and Google has the right to shut off any publisher who they deem violate their T&C agreement.

It's a shitty situation, but it's not a monopoly example. It's just a huge company who doesn't really give a damn about any one publisher.

[ilovecars]

Yeah, I agree, it's not a monopoly. But they do have the most advertisers, so the alternatives aren't as good (for now, at least).

[ig1]

Both AOL Advertising and Tribal Fusion have huge display ad businesses (both reaching >500million people) with vast number of advertisers.

Many large content company only use Google for remanent advertising as the Google CPM is often pretty poor compared to other options.