The ballots have been tabulated and the strike by the actors’ unions against the advertising industry has formally ended. Members of SAG and AFTRA overwhelmingly approved the new three-year contract covering commercials by a nearly 40,000 vote margin. In total, 42,000-plus votes were cast, representing only a 34 percent return of the nearly 125,000 ballots mailed to SAG and AFTRA members. The rank-and-file thumbs up was considered a virtual fait accompli since late October when actors returned to work after SAG’s and AFTRA’s boards of directors authorized the agreement between the unions and the Joint Policy Committee of the 4A’s and ANA…..Word is that director Lara Shapiro is headed for Santa Monica-based Fuel….Editors Peter Odiorne and Matt Chesse have joined Crew Cuts’ New York and Santa Monica shops, respectively….Hispanic commercial production house Carbo Films has launched Traffic, a satellite designed to garner general market, English-language work for what initially is a lineup of three directors: Isabel Coixet; the mono-monikered Basil; and Ron Hamad. Coixet and Basil shift over from the Carbo roster, while Hamad was formerly with Los Angeles-based Vamp Films. Javier Carbo and Dora Medrano serve as executive producers for both Carbo Films and Traffic, which are located on the same Santa Monica premises…..David Morin, formerly VP of special projects and the content group at Softimage, a division of Avid Technology, has been named president of Manex Visual Effects, an Alameda, Calif.-based digital studio which had a hand in visual effects Oscar-winning work on What Dreams May Come and The Matrix….Brad Kimmelman has joined American Express Financial Advisors, New York, as a financial advisor, focusing his practice on advertising, production and entertainment professionals. Kimmelman was most recently an executive producer at Ghost Light Editorial, New York….
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