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Google’s advertising chief Jerry Dischler is stepping down from his role after drawing scrutiny during an antitrust trial targeting the company’s search empire.
Dischler will be replaced by Vidhya Srinivasan, a Google ad executive since 2019, who held roles at Amazon and IBM.
“After more than 15 years on Google’s ads business, Jerry Dischler decided to take on a new challenge,” said Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan. “Our ads business helps millions of businesses thrive and we’re grateful to Jerry for his many accomplishments in this area.”
“With a track record of significant innovations across privacy, measurement, AI, search ads and beyond, Vidhya is the natural successor for this role,” Raghavan said.
Dischler had admitted to Justice Department antitrust lawyers that Google had silently raised ad prices within its search results.
“We tend not to tell advertisers about pricing changes,” Dischler said. He confirmed that the price changes resulted in price hikes for advertisers on certain search queries from 5% to 10%. Rising prices any higher would be dangerous because it could lead advertisers to turn to rivals like TikTok or Meta, he added.
Jerry Dischler was Vice President and General Manager of Ads at Google. Google
DOJ lawyers also referenced a May 2019 email in which Dischler expressed concern about Google missing its quarterly revenue targets and discussed efforts at “shaking the cushions” to avoid hurting its stock price.
When reached for comment, a Google spokesperson said the move was Dischler’s decision, not the company’s, and had nothing to do with his appearance at the antitrust trial.
The spokesperson declined to say whether Dischler was shifting to a new role at Google or had left the company entirely.
The spokesperson added that Srinivasan is well-positioned to lead Google’s ad business into the future, having worked most recently on Google’s monetization strategy for generative AI features that are being integrated into its search engine.
That included a leading role in Google’s recent launch of “Performance Max,” a highly touted AI tool that helps determine where ads should run across the company’s websites. Google has said the tool will boost performance on ad campaigns according to client objectives.
The Google search antitrust trial wrapped up its 10-week run earlier this month. Judge Amit Mehta is expected to issue a ruling on whether Google violated antitrust law by mid-2024.
Vidhya Srinivasan will succeed Dischler as head of Google’s ad business.