Amazon secretly overcharged your ad auctions, FTC says

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In today's MarketingShot:

💸 Amazon secretly overcharged your ad auctions, FTC says

📍 Google Maps is quietly stealing your customer clicks

🧼 Dr. Squatch is turning IShowSpeed fans into $1M campaign

📊 Meta can now auto-track more of your conversions

📱 Snap's Unified Attribution cut app costs 26% in beta

Plus: 💡 6 strategies & tactics, 🎁 6 other news you might like, and 🧰 6 tools.

💸 Amazon secretly overcharged your ad auctions, FTC says LINK

The FTC and 22 state attorneys general are suing Amazon, alleging the company secretly overcharged advertisers in its search ad auctions for more than seven years by pushing final prices higher than what advertisers were promised.

The complaint says Amazon added a "soft reserved price" in 2019, an invented bidder that made advertisers pay close to their full bid instead of one cent above a real competitor, happening about 80% of the time by 2024.

More than a million brands and sellers, including over 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses, were affected across sponsored products, sponsored brands and display ads, with the FTC saying tens of billions of dollars was extracted.

📍 Google Maps is quietly stealing your customer clicks LINK

Google Maps is increasingly keeping customers inside its app for the whole journey, pulling clicks and calls away from businesses as people no longer start on a search results page.

Across the U.S. in Q2 2026, website clicks fell 12.5% and calls dropped 11.9% year over year, while direction requests grew 21.1% and desktop Maps impressions reversed to a 3.2% rise.

AI-powered local packs often show two businesses instead of three, frequently drop the click-to-call button, and surface only 32% as many unique businesses as the traditional Map Pack, with reviews feeding Google's AI answers.

🧼 Dr. Squatch is turning IShowSpeed fans into $1M campaign LINK

Dr. Squatch has launched "Speedrun: Million Dollar Mission," a nine-week contest with streamer IShowSpeed that will hand out $1 million in prizes across 25 challenges in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia.

Each week a briefcase holding a gold bar of soap is hidden in a city, with livestreams and GPS coordinates guiding fans, while more than 4,000 Walmart stores act as hubs using in-store displays and QR codes.

Rather than traditional media, the Unilever-owned brand is spending on prize money and hundreds of creators posting challenges, with briefcase values rising toward a $250,000 grand finale by the October 31 close.

📊 Meta can now auto-track more of your conversions LINK

Meta has rolled out a new Automatic Events option in the Settings tab of Events Manager, which uses AI to add and manage standard events on a website, such as purchases or registrations, when related actions are detected.

The feature includes a dashboard where advertisers can review the list of events Meta created, along with the button text or reasoning behind each one, and delete any of these events at any time.

Any new pixel created on or after August 3, 2026, has Automatic Events turned on by default, while existing pixels had it disabled, and an older near-identical toggle called "Track events automatically without code" still exists at the bottom of the Settings tab.

📱 Snap's Unified Attribution cut app costs 26% in beta LINK

Snap has made Unified Attribution generally available worldwide to every app advertiser using AppsFlyer or Adjust, with one real money gaming advertiser reporting a 26% lower cost per acquisition than SKAN-optimised campaigns during the spring 2026 beta.

The campaign-level setting hands the definition of a conversion to the advertiser's measurement partner, is fixed at creation and cannot be switched off, covering four event goals: App Install, App Purchase, App Add to Cart and App Sign Up.

Named beta cases include Mohegan Sun Online Casino, which recorded an 89.8% rise in return on ad spend and a 77% cut in cost per install, plus Deblock and Codeway on Adjust reporting lower install costs.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> How to turn data thought leadership into a growth channel, according to Semrush’s marketing lead: Turn one-off data studies into an always-on program with clear ownership and distribution so original research earns AI citations, media mentions, and customers.

> LinkedIn Discovery Strategy, Video Series Strategy, and Industry News: Rewrite the SEO title and description fields on old LinkedIn newsletters so AI tools recommend them, reviving dormant issues into steady traffic.

> How to Use AI to Dramatically Improve Your Quality: Build AI clones of the people who judge your work, then run drafts past them for feedback before any real person sees it.

> Your influencer marketing strategy is broken: Match creators, content, and metrics to your actual goal, because follower count and awareness campaigns rarely drive the sales two-thirds of consumers already make from recommendations.

> Where does AI get its information? And how to get cited: Earn AI citations by opening your site to AI crawlers, keeping content fresh and self-contained, and building brand mentions on licensed partner sites like Reddit and Yelp.

> Your Attribution Stack Cannot See AI Search. Here Is What to Instrument Instead: Measure how often AI assistants cite your brand instead of tracking clicks, since most AI-influenced conversions arrive without any referrer data attached.

Other news you might like

• The Pages Your Agency Built to Win AI Citations Just Lost Half of ThemLINK

• It Turns Out AI Agents Have Unpredictable Shopping HabitsLINK

• Google is making AI Overviews even bigger on some search queriesLINK

• AI Creator Marketing Platform Archive Launches AI Agent for VettingLINK

• Google: We Don't Penalize For Old Outbound Links With Shady ContentLINK

• Livestreaming Industry Stalls in Q2 as YouTube Live Extends Its LeadLINK

🧰 Trending tools

OpenSEO: an open source Ahrefs alternative offering keyword research, competitor analysis, backlinks, rank tracking, technical audits, and AI-search visibility on real DataForSEO data.LINK

Prelint: reviews AI-generated pull requests against your ADRs, docs, and past decisions to catch product drift before it hits productionLINK

Unabyss for Claude: pulls context from Slack, Gmail, Notion, and GitHub into one shared memory for MCP tools like Cursor and ChatGPT, so you stop re-explaining yourself.LINK

JustVibe: converts plain-text task descriptions, like planning a Tokyo trip, into working interactive apps instantly, letting you skip writing code entirely.LINK

Humalike x Hermes: provides AI agents with turn-taking, timing, and memory APIs so they know when to speak, wait, or interrupt, ideal for game characters and roleplay.LINK

Effects SDK: adds AI video effects like background blur, noise suppression, and lighting correction to apps, processing client-side across web, mobile, and desktopLINK

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