New Faces
Agency The Lab, Miami, has opened its doors. The shop is one of the first U.S. Hispanic agencies to focus on branded entertainment….Craig Davis has been upped to chief creative officer, worldwide of JWT. Davis is based in London. In other JWT news, the shop has shuttered Icon Entertainment@JWT, a unit launched in 2002 to handle branded entertainment projects….Scot Crooker has been promoted to associate creative director at Huey/Paprocki Advertising, Atlanta….Cathy Jenkins Wilson has been promoted to VP/senior broadcast producer at McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C….
Account Movement
Publicis, Seattle, has won ad duties for satellite provider the Dish Network….Dial Corp. has awarded its as account to the Chicago office of BBDO….Fallon, Minneapolis, was awarded created duties on two fashion brands: Earl Jeans, part of the Lee Jeans family, and Sigrid Olson, a unit of Liz Claiborne….Aer Lingus, Ireland’s official airline, has selected Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulous, to handle its ad account….Agency Howard, Merrell & Partners, Los Angeles, has been selected to handle advertising for Advanced Lubrication Technology (ALT)…
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