YourVoice.Now Summary
Corporate BenefitsTransparency & AccountabilityCivil LibertiesFirms with over $20 billion in online ad sales could no longer run the ad auction and trade in it too.
Corporate Benefits
A company with more than $20 billion a year in digital ad sales faces a choice. It could not own the ad auction and also own the tools that trade on it. It would file a sale plan with the Justice Department, which checks the buyer.
This covers firms with more than $5 billion a year in digital ad sales. Their brokers must take real care to act in the customer's best interest. They must also seek the best terms they can get on each order.
An ad exchange must offer every buyer and seller the same access. That covers its systems, its data, and its speed. Clocks must stay within 2 milliseconds of the national atomic clock.
A customer harmed by a knowing violation at one of the largest firms could sue. Damages would be the greater of $1 million per month or actual losses. Legal fees come on top.
A covered company could not make customers give up group lawsuits. That ban covers arbitration clauses too. Customers with the same complaint could file one case together.
Transparency & Accountability
Each buy-side and sell-side broker must publish a report every three months. It shows where bids were sent, how many were filled, average fees per 1,000 ads, and speed. Each report stays on a free public site for three years.
A customer can ask in writing for the bid-by-bid record behind its own ads. That includes winning prices and any payments tied to routing. Those order records would belong to the customer, not the broker.
Money the Attorney General wins for harmed people goes into a new fund. It is paid out to them without further action by Congress. State attorneys general may also sue. Anything left 10 years after an award goes back to the Treasury.
Civil Liberties
The broker must scrub the records before handing them over. Nothing left in them may point to a single web user. The rule still has to let the customer check the broker's work.
A company that gets this data may only use it for two things. One is to check whether the broker followed the rules. The other is to bring a lawsuit. Tracking web users with it is not allowed.
More about this bill
Most people would not feel this bill in their wallet. It lands on the companies that run the hidden auctions behind online ads. The target is any firm earning more than $20 billion a year from digital ads. Such a firm could no longer sit on every side of that auction. It would have to pick one role and sell off the others. That test would reach only a handful of the largest tech companies. The main rules would start one year after the bill becomes law. Companies earning more than $5 billion a year from digital ads would take on new duties. Their ad brokers would have to act in the customer's best interest, not their own. Ad exchanges would have to give every buyer and seller the same access. Advertisers and website owners could demand the bid records behind their own deals. Brokers would also post public reports on where they send orders. Those reports would stay free online for three years. One rule reaches you directly. When a broker hands over those records, it must strip out anything that points to a single web user. The company that gets the data may not use it to follow people around the web. The Justice Department and state attorneys general could sue over violations. Customers of the largest firms could also sue on their own. They could collect at least $1 million for each month a violation lasted.
Congressional Summary
Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act or the AMERICA ActThis bill limits certain large digital advertising companies from owning multiple types of advertising exchanges or brokerages and imposes certain duties with respect to the interests of the customers of such brokerages. Advertising exchanges and brokerages generally facilitate advertisers and publishers in buying and selling advertising inventory through an automated bidding process.Specifically, companies with more than $20 billion in annual digital advertising revenue are prohibited from owning more than one type of service within the digital advertising marketplace. For example, a company, such as Google, may not own a digital advertising exchange and provide software that assists publishers of online advertisements in selling advertising space on their websites.Additionally, companies with more than $5 billion in annual digital advertising revenue that provide brokerage services to buyers or sellers of digital advertisements must act in the best interest of their brokerage customers. The bill also establishes transparency and privacy requirements for such brokerages.The bill provides for enforcement of these requirements by the Department of Justice, state attorneys general, and private right of action.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- Senate
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in Senate
- Action Date
- 2025-03-13
- Date Added
- 2026-04-06
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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