How Three Advertisement Giants Agreed Not To Compete

What This Cost That Money Can’t Measure

The complaint describes a slow strangling of public debate. It says that over the last decade “untold numbers of Americans have been censored online,” and that the result was “a warped public discourse in which viewpoints disfavored by powerful corporations were excluded from portions of the digital public square.” This is the harm that does not show up on a balance sheet: a narrowing of what people get to read and argue about.

There is also betrayal at the center of it. The companies in this case are paid agents. Advertisers hire them to compete on their behalf and to win them the best terms. The complaint alleges these agents quietly agreed with each other to stop competing, then agreed to keep that fact secret from everyone outside the room. Clients were sold rivalry; the documents describe a pact.

And the publishers on the wrong side of the “Floor” were not accused of crimes or fraud. They published lawful news and opinion. The complaint says that once the agencies aligned on what counted as “misinformation,” the outlets they flagged lost the ad revenue they needed to survive. The penalty was applied first, with no court, no jury, and no appeal.

Legal Receipts: In Their Own Words

Every quote below is taken verbatim from the FTC’s complaint, which attributes them to executives and organizers inside this arrangement.

“When it comes to brand and consumer safety, media agencies have to put competition aside.” Attributed in the complaint to a 4As vice president at the founding of the APB

• It states the goal of the arrangement out loud: competitors agreeing to stop competing.
• Antitrust law forbids exactly this. “Putting competition aside” among rivals is the conduct Section 1 of the Sherman Act is meant to stop.

“The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.” Attributed in the complaint to the GARM Initiative Lead, cautioning the group in October 2021

• It shows the participants understood the coordination “could be problematic,” in the complaint’s words, and chose secrecy.
• Concealment is evidence of intent. People do not hide conduct they believe is harmless and legal.

“collaborate not compete on safety which is why uncommon collaboration is so natural for us.” From a June 2022 GARM panel answer prepared for GroupM (WPP), quoted in the complaint

• It is a plain admission, three years in, that the agencies treated brand safety as a place to collaborate instead of compete.
• “Uncommon collaboration” became the celebrated brand of the conduct the lawsuit calls an illegal restraint of trade.

“Eliminate disinformation via exclusion lists.” … “Count me in!” A June 2020 exchange in the complaint: GARM’s Initiative Lead, answered by a GroupM (WPP) executive

• It captures the mechanism, exclusion lists, and the agreement to use it, in two lines.
• The enthusiasm matters legally. It shows the participants signing on to a shared plan, not reluctantly following a rule imposed on them.

The Cover Story vs. The Conduct

The complaint documents a gap between the reassuring public language of “brand safety” and what the records show the agencies were actually doing with it.

• Publicly, “brand safety” was sold as protection from porn, terrorism, and crime. The complaint says it was used to demonetize lawful news and political commentary based on viewpoint.
• The industry’s own line was that agencies compete to give clients the best tools. A 4As vice president instead said agencies “have to put competition aside.”
• The “misinformation” category was framed as neutral. The complaint says the GARM lead pushed to define it specifically to deny ad revenue to a named conservative site.
• One Publicis executive recommended distributing the firm’s brand-safety guidebook “only internally and for clients,” not publicly, per the complaint, the opposite of an industry acting in the open.

The Math: Why Not Competing Paid

The complaint frames the agreement as a way to capture economic advantage while sparing each firm the cost and risk of competing.

• As of 2023 the “Big Six” accounted for about $81 billion out of $155 billion in US media billings, a 52% share of the market.
• The complaint says the agencies “conveyed to themselves economic advantage by avoiding resource-intensive individual research and negotiations without fear of competitive disadvantage.”
• Each firm could “rest assured that its competitors would impose the same tradeoffs on their respective customers,” per the complaint, so no one risked losing clients by aligning.
• The complaint notes adopting identical exclusion standards was not in any single agency’s economic self-interest on its own. It only paid once everyone agreed to do it together.

Time As A Weapon: Years Of Conduct, Then “Wait And See”

The arrangement ran for years before any regulator moved, and the records show the players planning to outlast scrutiny rather than end the conduct.

• The complaint dates the conspiracy’s onset to 2018 and follows it through GARM’s dissolution in August 2024, a span of roughly six years.
• After a House committee began investigating in 2023, GARM dissolved only after the committee’s July 2024 report, citing the “recent allegations.”
• Four days after dissolution, GroupM (WPP) told partners it would keep abiding by the GARM standards anyway, per the complaint.
• An October 2024 email quoted in the complaint says the group had “agreed to wait until the dust settles after the election to see where the political chips fall,” and was “regrouping at the end of November.”
• The complaint concludes the conduct “could easily recur,” describing the pause as strategic, not final.

The Shield: Running The Cartel Through Other People

The complaint describes the Big Six avoiding direct, agency-to-agency deals and instead routing the coordination through trade associations and outside vendors.

• They built the agreement inside the 4As’ APB (April 2018), a venue to “combine efforts, become one voice,” per the complaint.
• They then coordinated through GARM, created by the World Federation of Advertisers, described in the complaint as a forum to “check their competitive relationships at the door.”
• They leveraged outside raters such as NewsGuard, whose exclusion lists Publicis says it could activate “through its global exclusion list,” per the complaint.
• The settlement orders specifically bar each firm from using “Third Parties to create such means of differentiation on its behalf that it itself would be prohibited from creating”, closing the outsourced-shield loophole.
• After GARM folded, Dentsu joined a successor research effort and withdrew only after further scrutiny from the House committee, per the complaint.

Who Got Hurt

Economic Concentration

The complaint frames the harm as the loss of competition itself, concentrated in a handful of firms with enormous buying power.

• Five firms (six before the November 2025 Omnicom–IPG merger) dominate Media Buying Services, with the Big Six holding 52% of US media billings.
• Advertisers, the agencies’ own clients, lost “better quality and lower cost brand-safety tools, and the broader reach, better targeting, and cheaper inventory” competition would have produced, per the complaint.
• News and opinion publishers flagged under the Floor saw, in the complaint’s words, “dramatic declines in their sales of digital advertising inventory.”

Democratic Discourse

The complaint treats the narrowing of the public square as a distinct and central injury.

• The agreement “hampered debate on some of the most consequential and hotly debated subjects of public life,” per the complaint.
• It alleges the Floor reached lawful commentary on issues like immigration, healthcare, and gun policy, not just porn or terrorism.
• The complaint says the result was that disfavored viewpoints were “excluded from portions of the digital public square.”

The Settlement Isn’t Justice

The two stipulated orders that resolved the case against Dentsu and Publicis are built around what the companies did not have to give up.

• Each order states it “does not constitute any evidence against, or an admission of wrongdoing, liability or any issue of fact … or law.”
• Each defendant “neither admits nor denies any of the allegations,” admitting only the bare facts needed to establish jurisdiction.
• The relief is injunctive only. The orders impose no monetary penalty and direct no money to the advertisers or publishers the complaint says were harmed.
• The compliance monitor is appointed with the company’s involvement, paid an annual salary by the company, and “the fact that the Monitor is employed by” the company “does not alone” count as a conflict, per the orders.
• The orders run 10 years, yet the defendants remain members of the 4As and APB, the same infrastructure the complaint says hosted the agreement.

This Is The System Working As Intended

Read together, the complaint and the orders describe an enforcement outcome that leaves the machine intact.

• A multi-year arrangement among firms holding $81 billion in buying power ends with zero dollars in penalties and zero admission of wrongdoing.
• The watchdog is chosen with the company’s consent, paid by the company, and may be a company employee, per the orders’ Monitor section.
• The trade-association structure that the complaint says hosted the coordination (the 4As and APB) remains active, with the defendants still members.
• Internal messages in the complaint show the players planning to “wait until the dust settles” and “regroup”, a pause, not a dismantling.
• A February 2026 letter from the 4As, quoted in the complaint, says brand safety “might become a focus at the Association again in the future” if clients ask, language the FTC reads as leaving the door open.

What A Legitimate Fix Looks Like

The core failure this case exposes is that competitors were allowed to coordinate through trade groups and outside vendors with no real penalty and a watchdog they pay themselves. The recommendations below are our editorial view, not findings of the source documents.

What Now?

Direct your attention at the firms named in the case and the agencies that are supposed to hold them to it.

• The defendants are Dentsu US, WPP Media (GroupM), and Publicis. Dentsu and Publicis entered stipulated orders on April 15, 2026; WPP/GroupM was also charged in the complaint.
• Watchlist: the Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia, the plaintiffs now responsible for enforcing these orders for ten years.
• Support independent news and opinion publishers directly through subscriptions and donations, which routes around the ad-buying chokepoint at the center of this case.
• Push for monetary penalties and findings of fact in cases like this, not “no admission” settlements that leave the structure standing.
• Organize locally for antitrust accountability that treats coordination among dominant firms as the violation it is, and demand the FTC publish the monitors’ findings.