<p class="ingestion featured-caption">Courtesy of Ari Paparo/Marketecture</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Google faces a federal adtech antitrust trial next week.</li><li>The DOJ and 17 states allege Google used acquisitions to dominate the $300 billion adtech market.</li></ul><p>As Google prepares to travel to a federal court in Virginia to face down its adtech antitrust trial next week, a newly uncovered deck sheds new light on the 2007 DoubleClick acquisition that played a pivotal role in the growth of its advertising business.</p><p>The deck was obtained by adtech veteran Ari Paparo, CEO of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.marketecture.tv/">Marketecture Media</a>, which is producing "<a target="_blank" href="https://monopoly.marketecture.tv/?utm_source=monopoly.marketecture.tv&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=scoop-we-found-the-deck-doubleclick-used-to-sell-itself-to-google">The Monopoly Report</a>" newsletter to accompany Google's adtech trial.</p><p>Paparo confirmed the document's authenticity with two people with direct knowledge of the matter. (Paparo was a DoubleClick employee when the document was produced but didn't have access to it at the time.) Business Insider has separately confirmed the document's authenticity with a person with direct knowledge. This person was granted anonymity amid the high-profile and active litigation. Business Insider could not confirm with certainty whether this was a final draft. Five slides from a later version of the deck are also included in the <a target="_blank" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508/gov.uscourts.vaed.533508.1194.18.pdf">trial's exhibits</a>, submitted by the plaintiffs in the case.</p><p>DoubleClick was pitching itself to potential suitors Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google — hence references to "YMAG" in the deck — all of which submitted bids for the company, according to a person with direct knowledge. Google won out, paying $3.1 billion in a 2007 deal that officially closed in March 2008.</p><p>The US Department of Justice and 17 states claim in their complaint that Google reached dominance in the $300 billion adtech and throttled competition by making key acquisitions and manipulating ad prices. The DOJ and the states are seeking a breakup of Google's adtech business, which could have big ramifications on the broader digital ad market.</p><p>The case concerns the under-the-hood part of Google's advertising business: The technology that connects advertisers with publishers and that runs the advertising auctions that take place in the milliseconds it takes a webpage to load.</p><p>Google didn't provide a comment for this story. "We look forward to setting the record straight," a spokesperson for <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-loses-bid-end-us-antitrust-case-over-digital-advertising-2024-06-14/">the company told Reuters in June</a>, when a judge ruled the case would go to trial.</p><p>Excerpts from the 49-slide pitch deck below outline how DoubleClick was positioning itself as a key asset to help a potential Big Tech acquirer become an advertising giant.</p><p>BI has analyzed how the 2007 document could become a central part of next week's blockbuster trial, which is set to begin on September 9.</p>