Industry consultant Bob Samuel has been named executive producer of the newly formed Solution, a New York-headquartered creative resources management group which will offer representation and other services to companies on its roster. Samuel is in charge of day-to-day operations for Solution, which opens with two clients for national representation: Venice, Calif.-based visual effects house Sight Effects, and Hollywood-headquartered physical effects and set construction company Cinnabar.….Cathi Connor, Jim Waldron and Wendy Hanson of The Connor Group, Chicago, have been named to handle the Midwest for West Los Angeles-based Original Film….Don Stogo of Donald R. Stogo Associates (DRSA), New York, has signed an exclusive agreement with Zoom Film & Television, Sydney and Brisbane, Australia, to represent director/cameraman Mark Toia in the U.S. Additionally, DRSA will be exclusively repping director Dennis Hitchcock of Motion Picture Limited, Auckland, New Zealand, in the U.S…..Rachel Finn and Mary Saxon of FinnSaxon Represents, Santa Monica and San Francisco, respectively, have been named to cover the West Coast and Texas for Berkeley, Calif.-based sound design house Noises Digital, which features sound designer Kim Cristensen….London-based spot postproduction house Smoke & Mirrors has named Amanda Lowit its head of marketing, a newly created position at the company. She formerly served as head of television and a board director at Grey Worldwide, London….
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More