Report from MediaPost
In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that Havas Media Group has agreed to a proposed order that it will not participate in unlawful collusion related to digital advertising “brand safety” standards that the regulator says was used to stifle some political viewpoints in past years. The agreement follows settlements reached earlier this year with major advertising holding companies Dentsu, Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, and Interpublic, making Havas the sixth and final member of the industry’s “Big 6” advertising agency groups to resolve the FTC’s claims. The Trump Administration’s FTC argues that coordinated brand safety standards across large advertising agencies violated antitrust laws by reducing competition and enabling restrictions on advertising placements based on what it describes as biased or politically motivated criteria. Havas denied engaging in the conduct alleged by the FTC and noted that the order merely requires it not to enter agreements that establish common brand safety standards or restrict advertising based on politically motivated criteria.
Context – Most conservative leaders believe that the top digital companies, products of the Bay Area’s progressive monoculture, discriminated against them in the years leading up to President Trump’s second election. They believe that this alleged culture of anti-conservative censorship went far beyond the digital platforms and was instead backed by a US-Western European digital policy ecosystem of progressive think tanks, advocacy groups, academics, researchers, foundations, media outlets, and government agencies. Online content reviewers and their safety determinations are not seen as neutral or unbiased. In January, the US State Department issued visa bans to leaders from several European online research organizations working to block online hate and disinformation. The FTC dropped its legal battles with online research organizations NewsGuard and Media Matters for America following April agreements with the ad agencies to stop coordinating online standards. To be clear, the issue is not going away, it is shifting to “Woke” and ideologically biased AI.