The US competition authority FTC is suing Amazon for advertising manipulation

The US competition authority FTC and several states are suing the Internet giant Amazon for alleged manipulation of its online advertising auctions. Since 2018, the company has been secretly driving up prices and has probably earned double-digit billions, the authority said. The attorneys general of 22 states joined the lawsuit.

Companies can pay Amazon to have their advertising appear in certain search results. Which company gets the advertising space is decided by auction. According to the FTC, the highest bidder does not have to pay the actual price of his bid, but only one cent more than the bid of the runner-up.

Too high advertising prices and manipulation?

When advertising products, Amazon collected the full bid from the first place in almost four out of five cases, according to the accusation - and thus violated its own rules.

According to the FTC, there is also evidence of this practice in company documents that refer to a "hidden markup." In addition, the group itself drove up the prices with fictitious auction participants. Amazon itself rejects the allegations.