Legal claims spotlight tech giant’s dominance in online advertising, both as a buyer and seller
By Patience HagginFollow
Updated May 17, 2019 3:55 pm ET
Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG -0.28%decrease; red down pointing triangle Google has agreed to refund advertisers for ads purchased on its ad marketplaces that ran on websites with fraudulent traffic, following a lawsuit claiming the tech giant was withholding the payments, according to court documents and people familiar with the situation.
In 2017, Google offered limited refunds to hundreds of marketers and ad agencies who had purchased ad space through its online ad-buying tool after the company discovered a wide-ranging fraud scheme, which resulted in ads running on sites whose traffic was artificially boosted by “bots”—software programs that mimic the website clicks of humans.
