FTC accuses Amazon of running a ‘secret ad surcharge scheme’ in new lawsuit

美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）起诉亚马逊：涉嫌运行“秘密广告附加费计划”

Amazon is facing a new lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 22 states, which accuse the company of secretly charging businesses more for advertising on its platform. The lawsuit, filed Monday, claims Amazon spent more than seven years quietly increasing the prices advertisers paid through its online ad auctions. 亚马逊正面临来自美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）和22个州的联合起诉，指控该公司在平台上秘密向企业收取更高的广告费用。周一提交的诉讼称，亚马逊在过去七年多的时间里，一直在悄悄提高广告商通过其在线广告竞价系统所支付的价格。

According to the complaint, the alleged practice affected more than 1 million brands and sellers and may have generated tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue for Amazon. The 22 states joining the FTC are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington. 根据诉状，这一涉嫌违规的行为影响了超过100万个品牌和卖家，并可能为亚马逊带来了数百亿美元的额外收入。加入FTC起诉行列的22个州包括：阿拉斯加州、亚利桑那州、加利福尼亚州、科罗拉多州、佛罗里达州、爱达荷州、伊利诺伊州、印第安纳州、爱荷华州、肯塔基州、路易斯安那州、马里兰州、内布拉斯加州、新泽西州、纽约州、北卡罗来纳州、俄克拉荷马州、宾夕法尼亚州、罗德岛州、南卡罗来纳州、佛蒙特州和华盛顿州。

The lawsuit centers on Amazon’s Sponsored Products ads, Sponsored Brands ads, and Display ads that run alongside its search results. According to the FTC, Amazon told more than 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses that it ran a “second-price” auction where the winning advertiser would pay just one cent more than the next-highest bid, rather than the full amount of their own bid. 该诉讼主要针对亚马逊的“商品推广”（Sponsored Products）、“品牌推广”（Sponsored Brands）以及出现在搜索结果旁边的展示广告。据FTC称，亚马逊曾向超过50万家中小型企业声称，其运行的是一种“第二价格”竞价模式，即获胜的广告商只需比第二高出价多付一美分，而不是支付其自身出价的全额。

Because businesses believed they’d only ever pay slightly more than the runner-up, they had an incentive to bid high, trusting the system would keep their actual costs in check. But the FTC alleges that starting in 2019, Amazon made a “surreptitious” change without telling advertisers. It added a hidden surcharge that Amazon internally called a “soft reserve price,” and used what one internal document called an “invented auction participant” — a fake bidder, basically — to push prices higher than true competition would have produced. 由于企业认为自己只需支付略高于第二名的价格，因此他们有动力进行高额出价，并相信该系统能控制其实际成本。但FTC指控称，从2019年开始，亚马逊在未告知广告商的情况下进行了“秘密”调整。它增加了一项内部称为“软底价”（soft reserve price）的隐藏附加费，并利用一份内部文件中所称的“虚构竞价参与者”（本质上是一个虚假竞价者）来推高价格，使其高于真实竞争所产生的价格。

The complaint alleges this amounted to a shill bid: rather than the price coming from a real competing advertiser, Amazon was manufacturing a higher number for advertisers to beat. As a result, the FTC claims Amazon charged Sponsored Products advertisers their own full winning bid close to 80% of the time — effectively turning what was marketed as a second-price auction into a first-price one. 诉状称，这相当于一种“托儿”竞价：价格并非来自真实的竞争对手，而是亚马逊人为制造了一个更高的数字让广告商去竞逐。因此，FTC声称，亚马逊在近80%的情况下向“商品推广”广告商收取了其全额出价，实际上将原本宣传的“第二价格”竞价变成了“第一价格”竞价。

The FTC claims Amazon made this change because it wanted more advertising revenue, and kept it hidden because disclosing it could have led advertisers to lower their bids, which would have cut into that revenue. The company generated more than $68 billion in advertising revenue last year. FTC认为，亚马逊做出这一改变是为了获取更多广告收入，并将其隐藏起来，因为一旦公开，广告商可能会降低出价，从而削减其收入。该公司去年的广告收入超过680亿美元。

In a blog post, Amazon described the FTC’s lawsuit as “misguided,” arguing that the complaint “fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate.” The company added that its auctions evaluate billions of bids across different placements and formats, so prices naturally vary, and advertisers are “properly” informed about the pricing system. 在一篇博客文章中，亚马逊称FTC的诉讼是“误导性的”，并辩称该诉状“从根本上误解了广告商的运作方式”。该公司补充说，其竞价系统会评估不同位置和格式下的数十亿次出价，因此价格自然会有所波动，且广告商已获得关于定价系统的“适当”告知。