In today’s Digest, we discuss the FTC and states suing Amazon over alleged ad-price manipulation, Brussels putting ChatGPT in the same bracket as Google and ushering in tougher rules, and Australia’s digital ad spend hitting a four-year high, climbing 14% to AUD$19.8bn (£10.45bn).

FTC sues Amazon over alleged ad-price manipulation

The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of manipulating advertising prices on its retail platform in a scheme that reportedly generated tens of billions of dollars in extra revenue over seven years. Joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorneys general, the lawsuit alleges Amazon secretly raised the minimum price businesses had to pay to advertise their products, misleading advertisers in the process.

Brussels puts ChatGPT in the same bracket as Google

The European Commission said that ChatGPT now meets the bar for a "Very Large Online Search Engine" under the bloc's Digital Services Act, a designation that puts OpenAI's chatbot alongside Google and opens it up to considerably tighter oversight across the EU. Reddit and Roblox also crossed the line into "Very Large Online Platform" territory. 

The DSA triggers these labels once a service tops 45 million monthly users in the EU, a bar ChatGPT presumably cleared long ago given it now counts more than a billion weekly users globally. 

Australia's digital ad spend hits four-year high

Australia's internet advertising sector had its best financial year since 2022, growing 14% to reach AUD$19.8bn (£10.45bn) in FY26, according to the latest IAB Australia Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Search continued to anchor the market, holding a 43% share and hitting a record AUD$8.6bn (£4.54bn) on 13.2% year-on-year growth, but it was video that really stood out, jumping 18.8% to AUD$5.9bn (£3.11bn) and now making up nearly a third of total ad spend. Social video, in particular, is on a tear, up almost 30% to AUD$2.4bn (£1.27bn) and now accounting for 41% of all video dollars, compared to 38% the year before. Publishers, meanwhile, are increasingly steering their video inventory toward premium formats, with connected TV now capturing 60% of publisher video spend, up sharply from 51%, while desktop's share has shrunk from 37% to 25% and mobile has crept up to 15%.

According to IAB Australia CEO Gai Le Roy, much of this momentum is coming from beyond the industry's usual advertisers. While established brands are largely holding steady on budgets, she pointed to small and medium businesses, retailers, and international advertisers targeting Australian consumers as the real engines of new spend, often running campaigns continuously rather than saving budget for seasonal peaks.