Welcome in, today is Tuesday, September first, and we begin with Adweek's report on the Federal Trade Commission suing Amazon over its ad auctions. On the platforms side, the Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon over what it calls deceptive and unfair advertising practices, Adweek reports. Per that account, the complaint targets the auction rules that set prices on Amazon's ad platform, and alleges the company overcharged one point two million advertisers, collecting more than twenty billion dollars since twenty nineteen. Twenty-two state attorneys general have joined the suit. FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement that advertising customers were misled into paying significantly higher prices, and that those costs were largely passed on to consumers. This is a claim at the filing stage, not a finding. It still lands on how buy-side teams verify clearing prices across walled-garden spend. Reaction is not uniformly against the platform. Some practitioners who run paid search on the marketplace argue a relevance-weighted auction is being mischaracterized as manipulation, while others read the case as a bellwether for auction opacity across the category. Also today, Omnicom Media has merged Mediahub and Hearts and Science into one network called Hearts United. MediaPost reports the combined agency runs across forty markets with an estimated nine point one billion dollars in twenty twenty-five billings, and that Nicole Estebanell, previously chief executive of Mediahub in the United States, leads the American business. No global chief executive has been named. Ross Jenkins, who ran Mediahub across EMEA, takes that region, per Indian Television, with Asia-Pacific and Latin America leadership expected in the fourth quarter. The same reporting has Hearts and Science lifting billings fifty percent between twenty twenty-one and twenty twenty-five, and Mediahub thirty-three percent. Advertisers on either roster will meet this first as new account teams and reporting lines, and client assignments have not been detailed. Professional reaction leans toward merger fatigue, with some reading it as a bet that data-led buying and creative media planning can no longer sit in separate shops. Staying on the platforms side, OpenAI's ChatGPT advertising business has reached a one billion dollar annual run rate, Digiday reports, and European buyers now have self-serve access. That follows our earlier coverage of the agency-partner-only launch across thirty-one European markets in August. The same reporting notes the figure is one month's revenue multiplied by twelve, a snapshot rather than a year booked, and Adweek calls the milestone a marker of how central the business has become to OpenAI. The compression from high-minimum pilot to open self-serve is what buyers will feel first. Among marketers, a recurring read is that discovery is moving into the chat window, leaving two routes to visibility, buying placement or being the answer, though some weigh the run rate against incumbent ad businesses many times larger. Separately, Digiday marks one year of Cindy Rose as WPP's chief executive with an assessment that the turnaround is underway but far from certain. Following our earlier reporting on the Elevate28 restructure, that account has WPP Media winning just over three billion dollars in new accounts by estimated media value two thirds through the year, against two point eight one billion lost, and retention at forty-three percent, up from sixteen percent last year. Headcount fell about one thousand two hundred sixty roles in the first half, to roughly one hundred four thousand, with more cuts expected. The argument turns on the commercial model, not the pitch room. Operating margin sits at four point one percent against seventeen point four at Publicis, and that read holds the outcome-based deal signed with Jaguar Land Rover as the meaningful signal, noting no other client has taken one since March. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Itochu plans a tender offer for Dentsu Soken at two thousand eight hundred eighty yen a share, up to two hundred fifteen point two billion yen, starting in early November, per FinanzNachrichten. Adweek reports Stellantis chief marketing officer Olivier Francois is stepping down after two decades on the brand, staying on in an advisory role. Adweek reports BetMGM has made independent agency Cape its agency of record after two years of project work, launching a football-season campaign fronted by Jon Hamm. And finally, Chipotle has enlisted one hundred creators for a national campaign, per Marketing Dive, the first work from chief brand officer Fernando Machado and its new agency Kids.