Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over $20 Billion Ad-Rigging Scheme

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson has filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the company's advertising pricing scheme has overcharged more than 1.2 million advertisers by over $20 billion since 2019.

The suit claims that Amazon manipulated its ad auctions to inflate what sellers had to pay, adding billions of dollars in costs that ultimately get passed on to customers with higher prices for groceries and other essential goods sold on the platform.

According to internal Amazon documents cited in the lawsuit, the company knowingly increased prices while 'hoping that advertisers don't notice and decrease bids or ad spend.'

The lawsuit alleges that Amazon tested how much it could increase these hidden charges without advertisers detecting them, then raised the charges as those tests showed advertisers were not changing their behavior.