DOJ OK With Online Ad Production Services Marketplace

The Trump Administration won't challenge a proposal to create an online market where advertisers can get bids for advertising production services.

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers submitted a proposal to create an online platform where those advertisers can solicit bids from production services companies. In a response, DOJ told the counsel for AICP that while exchanging price and other competitive info can make it easier for competitors to coordinate activity anticompetitively, AICP has designed the platform to prevent that kind of info sharing.

Those include safeguards against information being shared among advertisers and firewalls against AICP accessing the third-party info.

Based on those safeguards and firewalls protecting third-party information, Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim told AICP Justice has no intention of challenging the bidding platform.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.