Major U.S. advertising agencies have agreed to end an alleged censorship scheme that sought to demonetize conservative and independent news outlets, including The Federalist.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the proposed order on Wednesday. The federal agency noted that the tentative deal will halt “alleged coordinated conduct” between ad agencies and groups specializing in identifying so-called “disinformation” that reportedly sought to prevent the aforementioned outlets from effectively generating ad revenue.
As the FTC alleged in its legal complaint, beginning in 2018, “major U.S. advertising agencies WPP, Publicis and Dentsu — who buy digital ad inventory on behalf of advertisers — unlawfully colluded to impose common ‘brand safety’ standards across the digital advertising industry.” Along with their primary competitors Omnicom and IPG, these ad agencies purportedly “operated through trade associations to establish a common ‘Brand Safety Floor’ to target ‘misinformation.'”
The federal agency’s complaint additionally alleged that “disinformation” firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) weaponized this “misinformation” designation to “promote the demonetization of disfavored political viewpoints.” Among the outlets targeted by this alleged operation was The Federalist.
“In a competitive market, ad agencies compete for advertisers’ business by offering brand-safety tools that provide the best quality at the lowest cost,” an FTC press release reads. “The brand safety agreement displaced competition by insulating the ad agencies from these competitive conditions, according to the [FTC] complaint.”
The proposed deal will need to be approved by a federal judge in order to be finalized. If given the green light, the FTC said the deal “will ensure that each of the biggest U.S. advertising agencies are prevented from engaging in agreements that would set common brand safety standards or restrict advertising based on biased and politically motivated criteria.”
“Omnicom and IPG are subject to a similar FTC order,” according to the federal agency.
“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.”
The FTC’s complaint was joined by a coalition of states that included Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. The agency’s complaint and final order were both filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
