FTC Drops NewsGuard Demand After Settling Ad Agency Antitrust Cases
The Federal Trade Commission has ended its information demand against NewsGuard, the media credibility rating service, after reaching settlements in antitrust cases against major advertising holding companies Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP. The development comes as NewsGuard separately pursues its own lawsuit against the FTC over what the company alleges were overreaching restrictions imposed on advertising giant Omnicom.
Background: The NewsGuard Investigation
The FTC had been investigating whether major advertising agencies were colluding to boycott advertising on news websites rated positively by NewsGuard, as part of a broader investigation into whether ad agency coordinated brand safety practices constituted anticompetitive behavior. NewsGuard's ratings — which assess news outlets for journalistic standards — had been used as a screening tool by many large advertisers, leading to concerns about whether the system was being used to systematically defund certain categories of news publishers.
The Settlements and What They Mean
The FTC's settlements with Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP require the agencies to modify practices around coordinated advertiser boycotts but do not constitute admissions of wrongdoing. By resolving the cases that prompted the NewsGuard demand, the FTC no longer had the same legal basis to compel NewsGuard's cooperation with its investigation. The settlements effectively closed the regulatory chapter of the ad agency investigation while leaving open questions about NewsGuard's own legal position.
NewsGuard's Counter-Lawsuit Against FTC
NewsGuard has separately filed suit against the FTC, alleging that restrictions the commission sought to impose on Omnicom's use of NewsGuard ratings — as a condition of approving a different merger — amounted to government interference with a private media credibility service. NewsGuard argues the restrictions violate the First Amendment by effectively penalizing a news quality rating system. This litigation is ongoing and represents a novel First Amendment challenge to FTC merger conditions.
The Bottom Line
The FTC-NewsGuard saga highlights the complex intersection of advertising markets, media credibility systems, and antitrust regulation. As digital advertising becomes increasingly automated, brand safety tools like NewsGuard's ratings have outsized market power to direct billions in ad spending. How regulators treat these systems — as neutral market infrastructure or potential tools of anticompetitive coordination — will have significant implications for the future of the news industry's advertising revenue.
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