Plus: Jersey Mike’s looks for favor with Gen Z; Saturday Evening Post shuts down print operation.
Amazon is pushing back against a new lawsuit accusing the company of secretly driving up advertising prices.
Marketing Dive reports that the Federal Trade Commission and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging the company manipulated its advertising auctions in ways that caused roughly 1.2 million advertisers to pay more. Regulators said the practice began in 2019 and generated billions of dollars in additional revenue.
According to the FTC, internal Amazon documents warned that disclosing parts of the pricing system could cause “irrevocable damage to advertiser trust.”
Amazon largely disagrees with the claims.
In a lengthy blog post, the company called the FTC’s case “misguided” and accused regulators of using a small number of internal communications to suggest there was a coordinated effort to mislead advertisers.
“After reviewing approximately 1.5 million pages spanning six years, the FTC leans on a handful of simplified communications to allege a companywide effort to deceive,” Amazon wrote. “That is patently false.”
Amazon also offered data to support its case. The company said average winning bids for sponsored product search ads fell 50% between 2019 and 2025. It also argued that changes to its ad system have helped advertisers get better results by putting more weight on relevance.
“Advertisers adjust bids based on real-world outcomes, not descriptions of auction mechanics,” Amazon said.
The company did acknowledge that some older educational videos and training materials contained outdated explanations of its auction system. Amazon said those materials had limited reach and were later removed or updated.
Why it matters: Amazon didn’t come out and just say the allegations were wrong and then move along. It challenged the FTC’s evidence, presented its own data, explained how its system works and owned some of the communications problems.
That gives the response some more credibility.
When an organization is under attack, there might be temptation to immediately become defensive, especially with legal matters. Amazon used strong language to clarify what it believes is a false larger accusation and the smaller problems it admits existed. This, too, makes the response seem like more of a genuine attempt to explain.
They were also able to make their case by publishing a detailed blog rather than sending a short statement to reporters, which allows the company both somewhere to point people to and gives them some control of the narrative.
How will Jersey Mike’s adapt for a new generation?
Jersey Mike’s has built its business around older, more affluent customers, but as the business grows, the challenge now is drawing in Gen Zers. About 70% of its customers are Gen X or Boomers, while Gen Z accounts for just 2%, according to The Wall Street Journal. This is a growing problem for a chain that wants to go from about 3,300 locations to 15,000 worldwide.
The outlet says the company has historically leaned heavily on TV and sponsorships, spending only about 1% of its marketing budget on social media in 2025, compared with 10% to 25% at many other large restaurant brands.
They’re now shifting more attention to Instagram and TikTok and looking to make better use of their 12.5 million loyalty members through more personalized offers.
Companies don’t necessarily need to reinvent themselves or try out every viral Gen Z trend during a growth period. But they do need to show up where younger consumers spend their time and speak to them in a way that resonates authentically. Communicators should consistently test whether the channels that built their brand are still the channels that will grow it.
Why is the Saturday Evening Post stopping its print edition?
The Saturday Evening Post is ending its print edition after more than 200 years, another sign of how drastically reader habits and publishing have changed.
The magazine, known for its Norman Rockwell covers and fiction from writers including Jack London, will continue publishing online, per The New York Times. The publication said rising production costs, falling advertising revenue and less readers solidified the decision.
“We’ve been dealing with it for over a decade,” Publisher Joan SerVaas said. “We continued hoping it would turn around or life would get better. Now we’re pretty sure it’s not going to get any better.”
This is yet another reminder that the media outlets brands have always relied on are still being reshaped by cost pressures and audience behavior.
A long-standing outlet may have to completely change its delivery method. This means outreach strategies need to be built around where audiences are getting information now. Communicators need to keep watching where readers are moving and what formats still have value, then provide something useful.
How should AI breaches be explained?
Researchers testing OpenAI tools found that some autonomous agents were able to break out of a controlled environment and interact with other outside systems, including Hugging Face.
The Verge reports the incident was part of a cybersecurity test, but it raised questions about who is responsible when those systems act in unexpected ways. AI podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, well-known in Silicon Valley for his expertise in tech, blogged about the incident to help explain what happened to non-tech folks. He described the breach as if the AI became alive and formed an attack, which then caused some discourse online for being misleading because AI agents are not alive.
Some argued Patel’s word choice made the technology sound like an independent actor, when in reality, people and companies built the systems, set the rules and decided how they were used.
This is a caution for communicators that as AI becomes a bigger part of the workplace, and any subsequent security breaches, it’s important to clearly explain what the technology is and who is responsible for its safeguards.
Patel’s language may have made a complicated issue easier to understand, but companies should be careful that they’re not distancing themselves from accountability when describing such events.
The post The Scoop: Amazon pushes back on FTC claims in detailed blog appeared first on PR Daily.
