The Association of National Advertisers said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing media buying in the advertising industry and has requested help from the trade group and its members, confirming an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal.
The FBI has been interviewing people in the ad business about the way advertising is bought and sold, and about a 2016 investigation of the industry commissioned by the ANA, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The 2016 report, by corporate investigations firm K2 Intelligence, listed a range of suspect practices, such as agencies receiving cash rebates from media sellers for reaching spending thresholds and not returning those funds to clients. Ad companies broadly denied wrongdoing when the ANA study was released.
The bureau has contacted Reed Smith LLP, a law firm working for the ANA, to seek the cooperation of the trade group and its membership “in a criminal investigation into media buying practices underway by the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York,” ANA chief executive officer Bob Liodice said in a letter on Wednesday.
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