By Nicole Penn Amazon On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon in federal court in Seattle. The complaint alleges that Amazon overcharged 1.2 million advertising customers by more than $20 billion since 2019 (more than 500,000 of them small and midsized businesses) by manipulating the auction that sets ad prices on its marketplace. Amazon says the suit misunderstands how its auctions work and shows no harm to shoppers, and argues its auction saved advertisers about $8 billion between 2021 and 2025. WPP The week before, WPP asked a New York judge to end a different fight. Its August 26 motion seeks dismissal of Richard Foster’s amended complaint, monetary sanctions against him, removal of his law firm, and an order forcing him to disclose how he obtained an internal Sony rebate investigation. Foster, a former GroupM executive, alleges WPP fired him for trying to expose an illegal media rebate scheme. His amended complaint claims Sony ran its own investigation and reached the same conclusions. WPP calls the claims baseless and without merit. Adweek counted three separate court cases that are now circling the same alleged practice. Hidden Layers In each case, money moved through a layer the advertiser never saw, and the argument is about whether anyone had a duty to show it. That layer is larger than most marketers assume. Court filings put WPP Media’s non-product-related income from rebate-linked arrangements near a billion dollars a year. The ANA found that 81 percent of marketers plan to increase principal media buying in 2026, while fewer than half say they understand how principal media works, and 18 percent cannot say whether it touched their spend last year. Marketers watching these cases may be questioning their media partners and publishers. EGC Group has built its media practice on transparency well before these cases. Clients see where their budget goes via a transparent dashboard, and the Performance Media Engine helps maximize placements to the highest return.
