FTC in talks with ad firms

The Federal Trade Commission is in talks to settle an antitrust probe into whether major ad firms coordinated boycotts of online platforms, including X. (reuters.com) Reuters, citing the Wall Street Journal, reported on April 12 that the companies in the discussions include Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP, and that a deal is not final. The report said the probe examined whether agencies steered client ad budgets away from sites for political reasons. (reuters.com) The investigation began to surface publicly in June 2025, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Trade Commission had sent civil investigative demands to Omnicom, WPP, Dentsu, Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe, Havas, and Horizon Media. Reuters said those requests were part of a broader inquiry into whether ad and advocacy groups coordinated to withhold spending from certain sites. (reuters.com) At the center of the dispute is a basic antitrust question: advertisers can choose where to spend on their own, but regulators can treat a coordinated refusal to buy as illegal if competitors act together. Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson said in 2024 that group boycotts by advertisers can violate antitrust law. (ftc.gov ) (reuters.com) The case grew out of the advertising pullback at X after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X in 2023. Many brands reduced spending as they reassessed whether their ads could appear next to hate speech, misinformation, or other material they did not want to fund. (reuters.com) (wfanet.org) That brand-safety effort was organized in part through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a World Federation of Advertisers initiative launched in 2019 after the Christchurch mosque attacks in New Zealand. The World Federation of Advertisers said in August 2024 that it was discontinuing the alliance. (wfanet.org) X sued the World Federation of Advertisers and several companies in August 2024, accusing them of conspiring to deprive the platform of ad revenue. The World Federation of Advertisers responded by saying the alliance had been a voluntary initiative focused on brand safety, not a cartel. (wfanet.org) (campaignlive.com) The Federal Trade Commission also folded similar concerns into merger review. In June 2025, the agency said a proposed consent order for Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic would bar the combined company from coordinating ad placements based on political or ideological viewpoints. (ftc.gov) That order described Omnicom and Interpublic as the third- and fourth-largest media-buying agencies in the United States and said the remedy was meant to prevent “anticompetitive coordination” in media buying. Omnicom announced the Interpublic deal in December 2024 at about $13.25 billion in stock. (ftc.gov) (reuters.com) If the current talks produce a settlement, the Federal Trade Commission would end one of the most politically charged antitrust probes in advertising without a court fight. If they fail, the agency would still have the option to sue, and the same question would remain: when does brand safety become coordination. (reuters.com)