Production company Ruckus Films has secured talent agency Hustle to handle representation on the East Coast. Hustle is headed by founding partner and rep Anya Zander who has a track record with director JJ Adler, co-founder of Ruckus. Early on in their careers, Zander helped Adler connect with clients and creatives whom the director said remain among her favorite collaborators to this day. Hustle will rep Adler and the full Ruckus directorial roster which is known for comedic visual storytelling, turning out work for such brands as AT&T, Progressive, Mercedes-Benz and Bank of America….
Indie reps Bobby Rowe and Sabrina Mehar have formalized their longtime close professional and personal relationship into a new repping company named THICK and THIN. Based in New York and Miami, Rowe and Mehar open with a roster of companies including: Chapeau Studios, a VFX and design studio; editorial and production company Cutters Studios; E1 Studios, a mainstay in the field of pre-visualization that now handles any stage of the production pipeline from start to finish; MAS, Music and Strategy, a bicoastal music and sound studio; Quriosity Productions, a minority-owned studio which offers production, post and photography; minority-owned production company Unicorns & Unicorns; and production company Windy Films. Rowe comes to THICK and THIN from his own company, Bobby Rowe, while Mehar comes over from her post as head of sales at E1 Studios. Rowe is a native New Yorker who found his way into repping from his first perch at Crushing Music where he started as an intern. That’s where he met Mehar, a London native who’d just arrived in NYC on a Mountbatten internship. Rowe went on to become a producer, albeit with a sales focus, at music house Karmagroove and has worked as a freelance composer. Mehar connected him with his next gig, at MAS, and from there he landed at the pre-viz specialist shop 321 Launch, where he reconnected with Mehar. He opened his own repping firm after leaving Launch in 2019. Mehar’s career took a similar path, with a few side jaunts. After Crushing Music, she joined edit house The Well, and ended up working with indie rep Jolie Miller. Mehar took a year’s break to work in Dubai, then landed a sales and marketing gig at a Wall Street private club, where she specialized in partnering with global luxury brands seeking to connect with its clientele. She then returned to the ad biz, landing at 321 Launch while also opening her own rep firm Cachet, before going in-house at E1 Studios…
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