Bloomberg Intelligence Amazon, Google Probed by FTC Over Search Advertising Practices
Sep 12, 2025
Justin Teresi, an Antitrust litigation and policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, dives deep into the FTC's investigation into Amazon and Google for allegedly misleading advertisers about their ad terms and pricing. The discussion reveals potential impacts on market competition and consumer protections in the digital advertising realm. Teresi also touches on how this scrutiny could reshape advertising practices in Big Tech, highlighting the broader implications for the industry amid evolving regulatory landscapes.
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Probe Targets Misleading Ad Terms
- The FTC probe into Amazon and Google centers on whether ad pricing and terms misled advertisers rather than classic antitrust monopolization claims.
- Remedies from such consumer-protection probes are likelier to be transparency fixes than structural breakups.
Search Remedies Are Already Shifting Transparency
- Recent remedies in the Google search ruling already push for more transparency in text-based search ads.
- Those changes could overlap with or reduce the scope of separate FTC inquiries into search advertising pricing.
Investigations Are Long And Confidential
- FTC investigations like this often begin confidentially and can take years to resolve.
- Many investigations end without broad public enforcement, but they remain long-term regulatory risks.