The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

When a Big Customer Fires You, Sell Value Not Price

When a customer pulls the plug, you have one shot — show them what they're losing, not just what you'll discount.

I am head of product management for DFP and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. I have been working closely with your account team here at Google on matters related to your upcoming renewal that have led to Hearst Magazines deactivating AdX as a demand source. I really value our partnership, so I want to extend our regrets that the relationship between our companies has reached the point that you saw turning off the Ad Exchange as your next step. All of us here at Google are committed to helping turn things around and proving to you that the Ad Exchange can continue to help you meet your goals in 2017 and beyond. To help rebuild trust, we have provided detailed, confidential responses on each Hearst concern in the attached PDF document. In summary, the key points are: 1 - we are offering our engineering and analytic resources to participate in a transparent and fair test, because we believe that by completely turning off AdX, you are losing out on unique demand from our ad network (GDN) and higher yields from our DSP (DBM); 2 - we are offering to discuss your broader ad technology cost structure, because we believe that there may be other opportunities for Google to reduce costs, beyond DFP & AdX fees; 3 - we are offering price concessions which we feel offer fair value for money, because we believe that selecting the low-cost vendor in ad tech is not a recipe for sustainable long-term growth.

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Court Exhibit
United States v. Google LLC (Ad Tech)
1:23-cv-00108 (VAED), Trial Ex. PTX0453 — DOJ public archive
January 20, 2017
Public domain
View the primary source →