OCTOBER 13, 1995/Former DDB Needham Chicago senior producer Marty Weiss has departed the agency side, signing with Complete Pandemonium, San Francisco…. Bicoastal Chelsea Pictures has opened a New York-based animation division, and named David Lyons, a former producer at now defunct Limelight Commercials, executive producer for animation….Rick Wysocki has been named VP/ managing director of the New York-based film division of Image Bank. Since 1993, Wysocki has been a partner at Imagetel International, a Hawthorne, N.Y.-based manufacturer and marketer of video conferencing equipment….
OCTOBER 12, 1990/Joseph Rein has become head of production at Cohen/Johnson, Los Angeles. He ends a nine-year tenure as exec. prod. at Bozell and its predecessor shop Kenyon & Eckhardt, both Los Angeles….Director Sam Raimi—who directed/co-wrote the current horror/ action movie Darkman—has signed with Firehouse Films, New Rochelle, N.Y., for spot representation….Stephen A. Novick was promoted to co-creative director at Grey Advertising, New York, from deputy creative director. Novick will head the creative department with Richard Karp….
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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 โ 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