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by dkobran·5y ago·view on hn ↗
Because more competition in the ad space is invariably better for consumers. The alleged practices at play are illegal because they are known to harm consumers. And this is sufficient to demonstrate harm. For example, collusion is illegal not because someone necessarily sues and says “I was harmed by this” but because collusion invariably harms consumers. That’s the whole motivation behind collusion/price setting. Seems clear as day to me though I inquired with my friend who works in antitrust litigation and this was the response:

“There’s the broader principal that if they’re setting prices illegally they may not be harming consumers right now but they certainly could. Second, consumers are hurt when innovation/competition is curbed, and that is what they allege the deal’s purpose is. The bottom line is that if there were illegal deals and they can prove there were, those agreements are per se violations and you’re not really looking at consumer harm. This is what the case is alleging.”

The brief actually sums this up really well. The claims start at p. 100, which is where they allege harms but they provide good explanations throughout.

Edit: Note about the the brief.

1 comments
The thing is, the “consumers” of the ad space are the advertisers, not end-users. They’re the product

So monopolistic practices will harm the consumer (advertisers), but do they really harm end-users? Does a monopoly in farming harm the cows?

The end users buy the products of the advertisers. In a monopoly ads cost more and to make a profit advertisers have to increase their product prices. In turn the users pay higher prices for the products that are being advertised.
TL;DR Businesses just pass these costs on to their consumers.

Businesses have somewhat standard target gross margins, customer acquisition costs (CAC), LTV:CAC ratio, etc. and will determine pricing based on multiples of these variables. Ad spend is often a huge component of CAC and this directly feeds into what companies need to charge their customers in order to use their products. The assumption that businesses will just eat a higher cost as sort of consumer benefactors is quite naive. I can assure you they won’t.