New Faces
TBWA has announced a new group structure for its West Coast operations, TBWA/California, which encompasses TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, TBWA/Chiat/Day San Francisco, and Tequila, its marketing services network. The new effort will be headed up by Lee Clow, worldwide chairman and chief creative officer of TBWA Worldwide, and Robert LePlae, who was upped to the newly created position of president/CEO of TBWA/California. The streamlined restructuring is meant to better leverage office resources, and to take better advantage of media options. A part of the new structure will be a media arts lab, headed up by James Vincent, global managing director on Apple. Chuck McBride, the North American creative director, will additionally take on greater creative responsibility for branded entertainment opportunities within TBWA/California….McCann Erickson, San Francisco, has made several new hires for its Microsoft account. Group creative directors Scott Duchon, Geoff Edwards, Gerald Lewis, and Chris Toland, are joining the shop. Duchon and Edwards, who come over from TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, will work on Xbox, while Lewis, who was previously with Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and Toland, who was at the Los Angeles office of Fallon, will work on other elements of the Microsoft account…..Miles Turpin has joined BBDO Chicago as senior VP/group creative director. He will work on the LaSalle Bank account….Lee Seidenberg and Brad Emmett have been promoted to associate creative directors at Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York….
Account Movement
Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, will handle advertising for a new, yet-to-be named division of American Express Financial Advisors….Ogilvy & Mather, New York, will handle ad duties for the Lenovo Group for the ThinkPad notebook and ThinkCentre desktop computers–GSD&M, Austin, Texas, will handle advertising for Sun Chips, made by Frito-Lay….The H.J. Heinz Co. has consolidated its advertising accounts at Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago….The Papa Murphy’s chain of pizza restaurants has selected Periscope, Minneapolis, to handle its ad account….Delta Faucet has selected The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., to handle its ad account….McClain Finlon, Denver, has won ad duties on the Budget Truck Rental account….
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