U.S. authorities have filed a lawsuit against Amazon over the manipulation of advertising prices

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 22 states have filed a lawsuit against the Amazon marketplace, accusing it of manipulating advertising rates, according to a statement on the FTC's website.

The plaintiffs alleged that Amazon engaged in “deceptive and unfair practices” that “secretly inflated prices for online search ad auctions,” the FTC said. Over more than seven years, Amazon covertly and substantially increased the prices that more than 1 million brands and sellers were forced to pay for advertising on the company’s platform, the Commission alleges.

"As a result, the lawsuit alleges that Amazon's scheme likely extracted tens of millions of dollars from its unsuspecting advertising clients," the FTC asserts.

Amazon's stock accelerated its decline following the commission's announcement: at its intraday low, it was down 3.5%, though it later recovered some of those losses.

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