Dina Srinivasan

Dina Srinivasan is one of the most consequential voices in the antitrust debate surrounding digital advertising, uniquely positioned as both a former industry insider and a rigorous legal scholar. Her 2020 paper 'The Antitrust Case Against Facebook,' published in the Berkeley Business Law Journal, became a foundational document cited in the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, demonstrating rare real-world regulatory impact for academic legal scholarship. Her subsequent research into Google's dominance across the ad tech stack — examining how the company simultaneously operates as a publisher ad server, advertiser buying tool, and ad exchange — has been cited by the Department of Justice and informed congressional scrutiny of digital advertising monopolies. Before transitioning to scholarship, Srinivasan spent years working as an executive within the advertising technology industry, giving her firsthand knowledge of the technical architectures, auction mechanics, and business incentive structures that underpin competition concerns. This practitioner background allows her to translate complex ad tech dynamics — such as conflicts of interest in programmatic auctions, self-preferencing in ad exchanges, and data asymmetries — into legally actionable frameworks that resonate with regulators and courts. Her work bridges the gap between technical industry practice and antitrust law in a way few scholars can. Srinivasan has testified before government bodies and her research has been featured in major legal journals and mainstream press coverage of tech regulation. She is widely credited with helping establish the intellectual foundation for treating digital advertising markets as distinct, analyzable antitrust markets, and for articulating how vertical integration across the ad stack creates structural conflicts of interest that harm publishers, advertisers, and ultimately consumers.

Last updated May 30, 2026 by the ATDb Editorial Team