Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Analysis Group was retained on behalf of Meta in a landmark antitrust suit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC charged that Meta (then known as Facebook) held a monopoly in the market for personal social networking (PSN) and that it maintained its dominant position by purchasing Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition in the PSN market, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

An Analysis Group team led by Managing Principal Aaron Yeater, Vice Presidents Hitesh Makhija and David Toniatti, and Managers Heather Banic and Kritika Narula supported academic affiliate Catherine Tucker, who filed expert reports and testified at deposition and trial. Professor Tucker opined that the success of Meta’s advertising business was due to innovation in ad quality rather than to an exercise of market power.

Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in Meta’s favor, giving the company a complete victory.  Relying heavily on Professor Tucker’s trial testimony, Judge Boasberg found that Meta’s advertising strategy was not evidence of anticompetitive conduct but, rather, of an improvement in advertising features and an increase in ad quality.