FTC and Eight States File Complaint Against Major Ad Agencies Over Alleged Brand‑Safety Collusion

Federal regulators and eight states are accusing the world’s biggest advertising conglomerates of unlawfully coordinating how “brand safety” standards are used across the internet — a move the government says warped competition in digital ad buying and helped drain ad dollars from sites labeled as “misinformation,” including those with certain political viewpoints.

In a complaint and proposed consent orders filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the Federal Trade Commission said WPP, Publicis, and Dentsu — three of the largest U.S. advertising agencies — began in 2018 to “unlawfully collude to impose common ‘brand safety’ standards across the digital advertising industry.” The FTC press release says Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG) are subject to a similar FTC order tied to the same general conduct.

The agency alleges the firms, which buy online ad space for major brands, coordinated through two key industry groups: the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media, known as GARM, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Advertiser Protection Bureau, or APB.

According to the FTC, GARM and APB were used to establish a shared “Brand Safety Floor” aimed at content designated as “misinformation.” Under that agreement, the complaint alleges, websites classified as carrying misinformation fell below the floor and “risked becoming categorically ineligible for advertising revenue.”

The FTC says that designation was not just about fraud or clearly harmful content. In its press release, the agency alleges that “firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index” used “misinformation” labels as a way to support “the demonetization of disfavored political viewpoints.”

The conduct described in the complaint is alleged by the FTC, and the companies have not had a chance to respond in court. The press release says the agencies have agreed to proposed court orders that would halt the challenged conduct and bar similar coordination in the future, but those consent decrees will not have the force of law unless a federal judge approves and signs them.

“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in the release.

Ferguson, who leads the independent agency charged with enforcing U.S. antitrust law, said the agreement among the agencies undercut normal rivalry.

“As we explain in our complaint, the brand-safety agreement limited competition in the market for ad-buying services and deprived advertisers of the benefits of differentiated brand-safety standards that could be tailored to their unique advertising inventory,” he said. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.”

The FTC is joined in the case by eight states: Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Their participation adds state-level antitrust and consumer protection powers to the federal case.

The complaint frames the dispute as an antitrust problem in the market for ad-buying services — the business of helping advertisers decide where online to place their ads and on what terms. The FTC says that in a competitive market, agencies should compete by offering different brand-safety tools and standards, allowing advertisers to choose among them based on price, quality, and their own risk tolerance.

Instead, the agency alleges, WPP, Publicis, Dentsu and others used GARM and APB to coordinate around a common set of rules. That alleged agreement “displaced competition by insulating the ad agencies from these competitive conditions,” according to the press release.

Brand-safety frameworks have become increasingly influential as advertisers look to avoid having their ads appear next to content they view as risky, such as hate speech, pornography or violent material. GARM and the APB, working with major brands, agencies and platforms, have developed shared definitions of what counts as unsafe and “suitability” categories that go beyond outright bans to more nuanced risk levels.

Industry guides and reporting show that, starting around 2020, ad-tech vendors and brand-safety tools began aligning with these GARM and APB standards, baking the shared “brand safety floor” and risk categories into the systems that decide whether a given web page is eligible to receive ads.

The FTC’s new action follows a separate, merger-related case involving two of the same firms. In June 2025, the commission approved Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic Group subject to a consent order that, according to the research, explicitly barred coordination to deny ads based on a publisher’s political or ideological viewpoint and sought to prevent coordinated boycotts and viewpoint-based exclusions.

By contrast, the case announced Wednesday is not tied to a merger review. The FTC describes it as a broader enforcement move against allegedly collusive conduct by multiple holding companies using industry trade groups.

The agency also stresses that it is not directly suing NewsGuard or the Global Disinformation Index in this action; instead, it is citing their alleged role to support its claim that the brand-safety framework was used to steer ads away from certain viewpoints. Separately, those two firms have sued the FTC over the agency’s civil investigative demands, arguing in ongoing cases that the inquiries infringe on their First Amendment rights. Those disputes, and other lawsuits by platforms such as X Corp and Rumble challenging advertiser trade groups and GARM-linked practices, form part of the broader legal fight over brand safety but are not part of the Wednesday filing.

According to the FTC, the proposed consent orders with the ad holding companies are designed both to “stop the alleged coordinated conduct” and to “prevent similar conduct from occurring in the future.” The commission notes that consent decrees carry the force of law only after they are approved and signed by a district court judge.

The commission vote to issue the complaint and final order was 1–0–1, the FTC said, with Commissioner Mark R. Meador recused. Under the FTC’s standard, it issues a complaint when it has “reason to believe” a defendant “is violating or is about to violate the law” and believes a court proceeding is in the public interest.

For now, the future of the proposed orders will turn on the Northern District of Texas, where a federal judge will decide whether to approve the consent decrees and make the FTC’s negotiated remedies legally binding.