United bans AI agents as Brussels targets paid AI picks

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This is Marketing Is Calling, the audio edition of Landline, the daily newsletter from PPC Land. It's Thursday, November 12, 2026 This episode is read by an AI voice.

Today, United Airlines bans AI agents from buying its tickets. Brussels proposes fines of up to 6 percent of turnover, and wants AI shopping agents to say when a suggestion is paid for. Hims & Hers now faces seven states. Google expands its AI answers and moves their sources, and TikTok shop starts charging for membership.

We start in the sky. On Wednesday, November 11, United Airlines changed its contract of carriage, the rules every passenger agrees to. A new rule lists using AI agents to make, change or service a ticket or to buy any product as a prohibited practice. It counts as an agent whether or not a person supervises or approves what it does. The penalties are not small. United can cancel those bookings without notice. It can invalidate tickets, ban passengers, delete miles, take away elite status and end mileage plus memberships. Agents can still search for fares and show prices. The customer just has to finish the purchase. The travel site, View From the Wing, citing the Wall Street Journal, says Chief Executive Scott Kirby doesn't want another middleman. PPC Land pointed out that the contract doesn't define its key terms and doesn't say how United would even detect an agent. On the same day, the European Commission went the other way. Instead of keeping agents out, it wants them to be honest. It adopted a proposal called the Digital Fairness Act, a 72-page regulation that would replace consumer rules from 2005 Here's what it would do. Brussels could investigate companies itself and find them up to 6% of worldwide turnover. 10 dark patterns would be banned outright. Subscriptions would need reminders and an online cancel button. AI shopping agents would have to disclose paid suggestions.

And we turn to retail. It's a rough year for Hims & Hers health. If you've missed part of that story, it's a seller of custom drugs and medical referrals. And it's mostly known for weight loss and erectile dysfunction. This week, it was hit with a seventh state level lawsuit, which might be an organized campaign. But we'll come back to that. It was filed by an association for the owners of independent pharmacies, who said the company has no right to make and sell what's called semaglutide without an application to the FDA.

The PBM Litigation Project says it was not behind the suit, but it's tracking similar cases from state boards of pharmacy in Kentucky, Indiana and Mississippi. It's tracking a case that's before a medical board in Georgia, and it's tracking a case for an individual pharmacy in North Carolina. On top of that, there's another state board case in Kentucky, and a separate North Carolina pharmacy has filed a similar suit. And as far as a national campaign, on that lawsuit list, PPC Land noted that five out of the seven states are among the ten that sued pharmacy benefit managers last week. That was the lawsuit list that went on about middlemen.

Next, Google is making AI overviews better for its own results on desktop search. By overviews, we mean those AI-generated answers or the boxes where you don't need to click through to a result. On Thursday, the search and ads giant said they'll be showing up to 50% more of the time. And to make sure users still go to its sources, Google isn't removing them or replacing them. It said it was just moving where the links appear. And finally, we turn to TikTok, the social media platform. It's testing a paid membership for its e-commerce platform called TikTok Shop. This isn't TikTok's first experiment with subscriptions, but TikTok Shop is an entirely different business. And TikTok says, quote, There are a lot of benefits for shoppers to discover, end quote. PPC Land pointed out that one of those benefits is a price decrease of 35% on your first three purchases every month. And for merchants, a membership can make customers a whole lot stickier and raise the total number of orders by 10.5%, which of course could mean quite a lot of extra revenue if it works across the board. That's Marketing Is Calling for today. See y'all right back here tomorrow for the latest updates on what's going on in PPC. And grants and agencies would be liable when the influencers they pay break the rules. For ad tech, the big clause is Article 12 It takes the ban on profiling-based ads aimed at minors and on targeting with sensitive data and extends it from the big platforms to every trader, ad tech included. The commission estimates consumers lose at least 10.3 billion euros a year. Parliament and the member states still have to agree, and the rules would apply a year after they take effect. Back in the US., the Federal Trade Commission in seven states filed an amended complaint against Hims & Hers on Tuesday, November 10th. Five states joined, and the counts rose from nine to 16 The complaint says free consultations, he had paid subscriptions, that canceling was made hard, and that health data went to ad platforms. The numbers are striking. It says Hims uploaded about 14 million customer email addresses to Meta over almost three years. Florida alone can seek up to $50,000 per violation.