Amazon charged advertisers their full bid 79% of the time, FTC says
FTC and 22 states sued Amazon on August 31 over an undisclosed soft reserve price they say added 20 billion dollars of surcharges for 1.2 million advertisers.
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Nielsen changes TV currency today as ad-supported viewing falls to 71.5%
Nielsen deploys seven changes to US TV currency on August 31 as its Q2 Gauge puts ad-supported viewing at 71.5% and TVision counts just nine attentive minutes.
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Google left AdMob rewarded video broken for eight days on Android
Google took eight days to restore AdMob rewarded video on Android after an August 20 failure it logged at the lowest severity tier on its status dashboard.
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Google drops parasite SEO penalties in Europe under Commission mandate
Google stops applying site reputation abuse manual actions to EEA search results on August 30, the first time its spam enforcement splits by user location.
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The week AI agents got the ad account and Meta got a two-hour clock
AI agents gained write access to live ad campaigns, Meta signed a $17.2 billion teen settlement and machine traffic passed humans in the week of August 24-28.
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Meta's teen settlement borrows tobacco's structure and tobacco's flaws
The Meta consent judgment copies the 1998 tobacco settlement almost clause for clause. That precedent is instructive, and not in the way the states may intend.
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Meta removes ad placement controls as bid cuts get capped at 90%
Meta advertisers lose placement controls as value rules cap bid cuts at 90%, while ex-Meta staff export the ad playbook to OpenAI, TikTok, Amazon and Roku.
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X Ads MCP gives AI agents write access to live campaigns
X Ads MCP exposes 23 tools to AI agents, 10 of them able to write to live ad accounts. Also: Sony Music sues Kroger, eHarmony loses in Australia, LSA billing.
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AI agents use five times more tokens than humans, OpenRouter data shows
AI agents consume nearly five times more tokens than human users, OpenRouter data shows, as Zapier and n8n traffic falls and token prices climb for marketers.
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A Twitch lawsuit puts a price on the creator work that trains AI models
A Connecticut streamer accuses Twitch and Amazon of training the Nova Reel video model on two years of creator work without consent, disclosure or payment.
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Bid controls shrink as ad measurement breaks: week of August 17
Bid controls shrank and ad measurement broke over seven days as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI withdrew levers while regulators moved against Uber and TikTok.
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Microsoft retires Max CPC as ChatGPT Ads defaults to automated bidding
Microsoft removes Max CPC from new campaigns October 1, ChatGPT Ads preselects automated bidding, and Google adds AI Max experiments. Plus an Oura ad lawsuit.
