November 24, 1995/Dick Sittig has resigned his post as senior VP/creative director of TBWA Chiat/Day, Venice, Calif., to sign with bicoastal @radical.media as a spot director….Documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple, who won Academy Awards for Harlan County, U.S.A. (’77) and American Dream (’91), has signed with Brownstone Films, Los Angeles….Rick Levine Productions, New York, has signed a pact with bicoastal 1/33 Productions, whereby the director will be repped exclusively by 1/33 in North America and Europe. 1/33 will also produce and manage Levine’s projects….
NOVEMBER 23, 1990/Director Phillip Stellings and executive producer Craig Rodgers have joined Gibson Lefebvre Gartner (GLG), Los Angeles. The production duo formerly comprised Stellings-Rodgers, a satellite of Santa Monica-based Eggers Films….Lisa Cobb has launched Concrete Productions, Dallas, after nine years as co-owner of ad agency Cobb & Friend, also Dallas…. Lisa Rawlins, director of the California Film Commission (CFC) for the past six years, has departed her post to take a VP position at Warner Bros…..
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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 — 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