Your Daily Dose of Ad World Buzz
Latest
✦Havas Media Puts AI Next To The Client, Not In A Silo✦Outlook Goes Down And Takes The Working Day With It✦Tim Cook Steps Down As Apple Chief Executive✦The FTC Says Amazon Quietly Raised The Floor On Ad Auctions✦Messi Ends Twenty Years With Argentina✦Republic World Puts Samarjit Singh Over Branded Content✦Mayuri Nikumbh Returns To Elephant As Chief Design Officer✦Meghna Sharma Will Edit Prestige India✦BULLET Puts Out A Feature Anime Made Entirely On Its Own AI✦Apple Becomes The First Brand In The Creative Hall Of Fame✦Ricky Ponting Buys Into The Company He Is Fronting✦Are AI Storyboards Changing How Ideas Get Approved?✦Havas Media Puts AI Next To The Client, Not In A Silo✦Outlook Goes Down And Takes The Working Day With It✦Tim Cook Steps Down As Apple Chief Executive✦The FTC Says Amazon Quietly Raised The Floor On Ad Auctions✦Messi Ends Twenty Years With Argentina✦Republic World Puts Samarjit Singh Over Branded Content✦Mayuri Nikumbh Returns To Elephant As Chief Design Officer✦Meghna Sharma Will Edit Prestige India✦BULLET Puts Out A Feature Anime Made Entirely On Its Own AI✦Apple Becomes The First Brand In The Creative Hall Of Fame✦Ricky Ponting Buys Into The Company He Is Fronting✦Are AI Storyboards Changing How Ideas Get Approved?
Ad Tech

The FTC Says Amazon Quietly Raised The Floor On Ad Auctions

Ad Tribe! Bureau2 min read
A halftone paper cutout of an auction gavel and a sealed envelope on a flat coloured background

The US Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon over its ad auctions, alleging it secretly raised the minimum prices advertisers had to pay to promote products on its platform.

  • Filed in the Western District of Washington, backed by a bipartisan group of 22 US states
  • The FTC alleges Amazon systematically inflated auction prices without telling customers, causing $20 billion or more in losses
  • Regulators say around 1.2 million customers were affected
  • States involved could seek civil penalties and attempt to recover some of the alleged losses
  • Amazon rejects the allegations

What The Regulator Alleges About The Ad Auctions

According to the FTC, Amazon raised the minimum price required to place product-promoting ads, generating billions in additional profit at advertisers’ expense.

The mechanism at issue is the reserve price, the floor beneath which a bid does not win. It is the least visible number in any auction and the one an operator sets unilaterally. An advertiser watching costs rise cannot tell from the outside whether demand increased or the floor did, which is precisely why the allegation is difficult to detect and serious if proved.

Amazon’s Answer

In a blog post, Amazon said its advertising policies are designed to show shoppers relevant ads and that the economics of its advertising business do not support the FTC’s claims.

It said average cost per click for advertisers stayed flat between 2019 and 2024 while sales generated from those clicks increased, and defended its broader pricing, saying it works to match or beat competing retailers.

Flat cost per click is a real answer but not a complete one. An average holds steady while a floor moves if the mix of what is being bought shifts underneath it, so the two claims can both be true at once. That is what a court will have to unpick.

Why This Reaches Past Amazon

The case arrives as Amazon’s advertising business becomes an increasingly important source of revenue for the company.

The wider consequence is scrutiny of how any large platform runs an auction and decides what advertisers ultimately pay. Retail media has grown on the promise of measurability, and every one of those marketplaces sets its own reserve prices with the same absence of external audit.

More on Ad Tribe Ad Tech.

#Ad Tech#Amazon Ads#FTC#Programmatic#Regulation
Follow Ad Tribe

Advertisement

Ad Tribe Outlook 2026, an independent study of the state of advertising today. Take the survey.