Interesting. The House oversight committee has subpoenaed ad industry associations, GARM and WFA. Members include: Adidas, Anheuser-Busch, BP, Goldman-Sachs, Unilever, Nike, Disney, etc. Antitrust violations?
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press ... unications
May 5, 2023
Mr. Daniel C. Sale King & Spalding LLP 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 900 Washington, DC 20006
Re: World Federation of Advertisers
Dear Mr. Sale: The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of the adequacy and enforcement of U.S. antitrust laws. Pursuant to the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee has jurisdiction to conduct oversight of matters concerning the “[p]rotection of trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies” to inform potential legislative reforms, such as whether existing civil and criminal penalties are sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in the advertising industry.
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), an association for international marketers and national advertiser associations, founded the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in 2019 to “unite marketers, media agencies, media platforms, industry associations, and advertising technology solutions providers” in order to “reduc[e] the availability and monetization of harmful content online.” According to publicly available information, GARM and the WFA appear to facilitate collusion among their members in a manner that may violate U.S. antitrust law.
To advance our oversight and inform potential legislation related to these collusive practices, the Committee must understand whether, how, and to what extent GARM and WFA facilitate collusion to prevent certain content from benefitting from advertising dollars and to reduce that content’s presence online. To this end, on March 22, 2023, the Committee requested that GARM and WFA produce documents and communications related to how GARM and WFA act to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online, in addition to other information, by April 5, 2023.
Our letter also identified examples of documents created by GARM and WFA that are responsive to our requests. 5 On April 5, your clients informed the Committee that they would not be able to respond by this deadline, but that they anticipated being able to do so by April 7.
Good stuff. Now keep peeling this apple to it's rotten core. Public discovery opens the door to lawsuits. Lots of them.