The scandal around the activities of the now shuttered Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) was so egregious that it refuses to die down, even if the group itself is no more.
A new twist comes with the upcoming merger between advertising giants Omnicom and Interpublic, former GARM members. They are also members of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), an umbrella for pretty much the entirety of the world’s advertising power – which originally set up GARM.
But then this power was allegedly used in an attempt to carry out mass-scale demonetization of entire social sites, notably those “disfavored” by the outgoing US administration, like X and Rumble, but also a number of conservative news sites.
The WFA is believed to have instructed its members to boycott these platforms and silence them by depriving them of revenue.
Now, the House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, who has for a long time been “on the case” when it comes to investigating government-Big Tech censorship, facilitated by third parties like GARM, appears determined not to let some new entity carry out GRAM-like censorship work under a different name.
On Wednesday, an investigation (this one related to enforcement of US antitrust law) was announced concerning the Omnicom-Interpublic merger, as Jordan sent letters to both corporations’ CEOs.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The letters slam both as GARM members from its inception and active participants “during its collusive activities.”
For these reasons, the CEOs are ordered to preserve documents and all contacts they had with the WFA and GARM and make them available to US legislators.
The letters note that the merger will create the world’s largest ad agency with more than 100,000 employees and some $25 billion in annual revenue. “The proposed merger of these companies will combine horizontal competitors with a history of collusion,” Jordan remarked.
With that in mind, the Committee wants to know what, if any, precautions are now being taken to make sure the new entity “does not use its consolidated market power to replicate GARM’s anticompetitive behavior?”
Furthermore, Omnicom and Interpublic CEOs have until January 7 to reveal what “brand safety” industry initiatives or groups their companies are involved with, either as members or otherwise.
