A multibillion-dollar merger between two holding companies is moving forward based on an unusual deciding factor: brand safety.
On Tuesday, Omnicom and IPG agreed to a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that won’t allow them to make agencywide brand safety decisions on behalf of clients for content that includes political or ideological speech.
So a client can decide if they want their ads to appear next to content based on the site’s or article’s political affiliation. But the agency can’t create a holding company-wide blocklist or allow list that includes politics or ideology as a deciding factor.
The news didn’t come as a surprise to our podcast guest, Ad Fontes CEO Vanessa Otero. In May, the nonpartisan news rating company received a civil investigative demand (CID) asking for information that she suspected was related to the Omnicom-IPG merger.
“I understand why Omnicom and IPG have agreed to this consent order,” Otero says, who previously worked as a lawyer specializing in content moderation. “Even though what the FTC is demanding here is likely unconstitutional.”
The consent order is rooted in the idea that ad agencies have been colluding to boycott right-leaning media. So if this hasn’t been happening, the consent order will change little. But it could have a chilling effect, making agencies, advertisers, ad tech companies and verification companies more skittish about how they deploy brand safety.
While Republican frustration with boycotts of conservative publications, including Breitbart News, led to the consent order, liberal media has also been demonetized due to brand safety concerns. The key factor cited in the shutdown of Jezebel, for example, was that its content couldn’t be monetized due to brand safety concerns. Could the consent order end up benefiting news media overall?
Less news blocking would be great for news publishers. That scenario is unlikely, however, and “probably not their intent,” Otero says.
But stranger things have happened.
Update 7/8/25: After this podcast was published, Check My Ads reached out to dispute our characterization of it as an avowedly partisan group. The company positions itself as non-partisan.
