By BY CAROLYN GIARDINA
NEW YORK-Lance Doty has been named executive producer at New York-based shop Homestead Editorial. He shifted from the agency side of the business, where he was a partner and senior producer at Ogilvy & Mather, New York.
"I am so excited," Doty said of his new role. "I feel like this opportunity is perfect for me. … When I met [principals/editors] Greg Dougherty and Charly Bender, I felt like we connected right away." Doty said he had been thinking about learning another side of the business and "I always enjoyed the post part of the process the most because they are the guys that have to fix everything." He aims to bring in new as well as repeat business.
Doty joined O&M in ’92, initially as an assistant producer. At O&M, he produced spots for such accounts as Kodak, American Express, IBM, Duracell, Hershey, GTE and KFC International.
Doty’s Kodak work includes "Venice" and "Paris," both of which were directed by Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Venice, Calif. "Venice" was honored last year by several shows including the London International Advertising Awards.
Earlier, Doty co-produced the Duracell spots featuring the battery-driven Putterman family, which were directed by Barry Sonnenfeld via BFCS’ now defunct U.S. operation. (Sonnenfeld is now repped for commercials via bicoastal Coppos Films.)
As a result of that collaboration, Doty took a year off in ’94 to work on the Sonnenfeld-directed feature Get Shorty for which he served as assistant to the director. He described the experience as "10 years of film school condensed into one. … Barry’s a tremendous personality."
Earlier in his career, Doty was a technical director at a CBS affiliate station in Ft. Myers, Fla.
Dougherty is happy to have Doty joining the company, noting that he was "an obvious choice. … His reputation is stellar. He’s so well respected and so well known in the business."
Homestead’s editorial roster is rounded out by Hannah Neufeld, Barry Farrell, Gardiner Welch and Sam Welch.
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