Cultivate.Media, a Los Angeles-based production company, and Click 3X, a NY-headquartered digital creative studio along with its live action division X3 Films, have partnered to form a bicoastal strategic alliance, expanding the companies’ extensive roster of directors as well as growing their capabilities across coasts.
The newly formed partnership allows Cultivate.Media and Click 3X the ability to bundle and package a wide range of director talent with Click 3X’s well established postproduction, animation, digital and design capabilities. The partnership will also give Click 3X and Cultivate.Media access to production operations on both the East and West Coasts, including X3 Films’ sound stage and equipment in New York City.
Cultivate.Media is led by Mark Thomas, partner and managing director, and Hugh Bacher, executive producer. Cultivate’s directorial roster includes Ali Ali, Dean Blumberg, Indigenous, Matty Smith, Scotty Bergstein, Steve Gordon and Gail Mancuso.
Thomas related, “We’ve been working with Click 3X on projects so this new relationship only strengthens our capabilities and increases our opportunities.”
Peter Corbett is founder and president of Click 3X. Bill Hewes heads up X3 Films with a directorial lineup which includes Tyler Greco, Lindsey Daniels, Aron Baxter and Justin Dickel.
“Projects now combine so many disciplines–live action, post, animation and technology, all areas where Click 3X excels,” said Corbett. “With this new relationship, we now can further expand and diversify our group of talented artists in a bicoastal operation to meet the varied needs of our clients.”
Both Click 3X and Cultivate.Media are represented by Brad Edelstein and Cachet (Sabrina Mehar) on the East Coast; Helen O’Brien in the Midwest; and Toni Saarinen and Brandon Pic on the West Coast and in Texas.
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