The FTC released new details yesterday in its case against Amazon, alleging that undisclosed surcharges pushed search ad prices as much as 250% above what the auction would otherwise have charged on major shopping days like Prime Day and Black Friday.
The newly unredacted complaint describes an advertiser who noticed a jump in cost per click and asked Amazon whether it had changed its second-price auction. An Amazon account manager replied: “This year the marketplace is even more crowded than any year previous, and we are seeing the spike in CPCs [costs-per-click] as a direct reflection.”
The FTC alleges Amazon used a mechanism the company called a “soft reserve” to raise the price even when no competing advertiser had bid that amount.
Read: “New Details Emerge in Amazon Ads Auction-Rigging Case” (Nov. 5) · FTC
The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon in August. Amazon disputes the allegations. Read AP’s August coverage.
From tipsheet: A buying agent can see that clicks got more expensive, but the price it paid alone can’t tell it why. Could advertisers ask sellers to report whether a competing bid or the seller’s own price floor set the price?
LLMs & CHATBOTS
ChatGPT Ads takes over bidding
OpenAI told advertisers in an email Thursday that starting Monday, they can set a target cost per conversion or click for ChatGPT ad campaigns. In click campaigns, OpenAI can bid above or below the target in any given auction while aiming for the advertiser’s desired average cost per click.
Existing campaigns using Max Bid or Max CPC can keep those controls until Jan. 1, when OpenAI will switch them to cost targets. Advertisers can also let OpenAI pursue as many clicks or conversions as possible within their budget without setting a cost target.
Read: “Bidding strategies and how pricing works in ChatGPT Ads” (Nov. 5) – OpenAI Help Center
From tipsheet: OpenAI is taking over more of the bidding just as it’s asking advertisers to check the conversion data those bids depend on. If OpenAI receives too few signals about purchases or leads, a conversion campaign may spend less than the advertiser budgeted.
PROTOCOLS
Agents make deals. Bidders buy impressions.
Is this headline a great t-shirt idea, or what?
Bedrock Platform CTO Damian Naglak showed how a buyer agent and a programmatic bidder can work together on a live campaign at IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Bootcamp in London earlier this week.
Using IAB Tech Lab’s OpenProposal spec, Bedrock’s buyer agent compared proposals, asked for more options where the brief called for them and took just a few minutes to agree to private auction deals with two seller agents built by Appliscale. Bedrock’s bidder then took over, deciding whether and how much to bid on each impression in real time.
“[A] deal is agreed once, but a campaign keeps moving. The list of people who’ve already seen your ad grows every minute. Deciding per impression lets buyers follow that, shift budget or raise a bid, without going back to the negotiating table.”
Read more from Bedrock Platform on LinkedIn. (Nov. 4)
From tipsheet: When it takes less work to set up a private auction deal, buyers can consider publishers they’d otherwise skip.
AGENTS
Perplexity touts agents for ad campaigns
Perplexity launched Teammates yesterday which is the AI startup’s version of AI agents for work.
On the landing page for the new product, Perplexity touted the use of Teammates for “ad campaigns.”
Read: Perplexity launches its own take on AI agents for work (Nov. 5) – The Verge
AGENCIES
What replaces the agency pitch?
On WPP’s earnings call last week, CEO Cindy Rose was asked about pitchless “CEO handshake” deals between agencies and clients. She warned against encouraging clients to “bypass proper due diligence.”
Rose didn’t name Publicis, but the Paris-based agency holding company responded in an open letter, saying marketers, engineers, data architects and procurement teams spend months testing an agency’s capabilities before awarding an account: “Because in the real world, enterprise partners aren’t chosen after a cosy tête-à-tête or legacy slide decks. They are chosen on connected identity and media solutions, intelligent creativity, and AI engines that drive business.”
See the entire letter: “Publicis hits back at WPP’s Cindy Rose over ‘CEO handshake’ claims in blistering letter” (Nov. 5) – The Drum (subscription)
Related: “Agencies find AI overuse is leading to brief bloat” (Nov. 5) – Digiday
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Debates: Give all your budget to Meta?
“AI will drive media consolidation. If fragmentation stands in the way of efficiency, then consolidation drives it.”
— Ari Paparo, Marketecture
Paparo also argues that more investment in measurement could work against consolidation. In his view, if advertisers can measure where the next dollar will generate the most lift and use AI to shift spending across sellers, they can get some of the efficiency of buying through one platform while keeping more sellers in play.
Read: “When Will Advertising Be Solved?” (Nov. 2) – Ari Paparo on Marketecture
MEASUREMENT
What’s a one-day copy test worth?
Procter & Gamble says its internal AI platform cut the time it takes to test marketing copy from 30 days to one and brought the cost down from $30,000 to $1,000.
Ad Age has put together an AI marketing guide, and Garett Sloane’s piece on measurement looks at how marketers can assess returns across productivity, ad performance, AI search visibility and commerce sales.
Read: “Is your AI marketing investment paying off? How to assess savings, ad performance and sales” (Nov. 5) – Ad Age (subscription)
From tipsheet: The $29,000 savings is easy to count, but a one-day test also gives marketers time to act on what they learn while the campaign is still running. Does changing the copy sooner generate incremental sales?
FINANCIALS
Earnings reports
Here’s what stood out in the quarterly results from Unity, the game development and ad tech company.
Unity
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- Markets: Unity stock was up 14.9% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “Third-quarter performance was our strongest ever, with Vector growing 126% year-over-year and 40% quarter-over-quarter, and the first GAAP profitable quarter since our IPO,” said Matt Bromberg, President and CEO of Unity.
- Results: Unity Reports Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Nov. 5) – Unity
- Transcript: Unity Software Inc. Q3 FY2026 earnings call transcript (Nov. 5) – Yahoo Finance
- Discussion: Bromberg said 30% of Vector’s 1,000 biggest advertisers now share data on what players do inside their games. Unity can use those signals to help its AI predict which players are likely to keep playing and spending after they install a game.
MNTN
Possible tuck-in: The next ad tech tuck-in candidate may be CTV ad platform MNTN with a market cap of ~$350 million:
After MNTN’s dismal Q3 2026 earnings report on Wednesday, W Media Research analyst Karsten Weide explained the company’s debacle on X:
“MNTN built its business selling CTV advertising on the promise of measurable outcomes. Then a botched sales compensation overhaul drove away 40% of its experienced salespeople…”
Read more on X. (Nov. 5)
TECH
Podcasts are life
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- “after 8 epic years at Salesforce I’m saying mahalo – going back to Gartner to host a daily podcast on AI” (Nov. 5) – Martin Kihn, SVP Strategy, Salesforce on LinkedIn
- “ADSN + Unharnessed | Muse, AI Shopping, and the Future of Ads” (Nov. 4) – ADSN with executives from NBCUniversal, Magnite and Swivel on YouTube
- “Vinod Khosla: freeing humanity from ‘servitude to survival’” (Nov. 3) – Summation, hosted by LiveRamp founder and former CEO Auren Hoffman on YouTube
EVENTS
Cannes Lions adds GEO award category
According to MediaPost, Cannes Lions will expand beyond the Palais and Croisette next year, with exhibitions, screenings and installations across the city. The festival is also adding a GEO category to its awards program:
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- “New Entertainment Lion subcategories for Original Entertainment IP and Food & Culinary Entertainment, and a new PR Lion sub-category for Creative Use of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).”
Read: “Big Changes Coming To Cannes Lions Next Year” (Nov. 5) – MediaPost
More: “Changes for Cannes Lions 2027” – Cannes Lions
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
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- Consumer product: “Introducing Personal Finance in Claude” (Nov. 5) – Claude
- “Introducing Images 2.6” (Nov. 4) – OpenAI
- Data for AI: “Dropbox acquires Tigris Data for $350M to bolster its AI infrastructure” (Nov. 5) – TechCrunch
MORE
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- Rebrand: “Today, PebblePost becomes Verastance” (Nov. 5) – Adam Soroca, CEO, PebblePost on LinkedIn
- AI licensing: “Anthropic Strikes Its First Licensing Deal, With the AP, for Election Coverage” (Nov. 4) – Adweek
- AppLovin Q3 analysis: Better ad predictions can attract stronger bidders and price some advertisers out of the auctions they used to win. (Nov. 5) – Eric Seufert on Mobile Dev Memo (subscription)
- Study: “Ads In Google AI Answers Concentrate In Apparel & Electronics” (Nov. 5) – Search Engine Journal