MARCH 31, 2000
Bicoastal production company hungry man has signed director Martin Canellakis for commercial representation….Jamie Hartman has signed with New York-based music house JSM….Nearly eight months after dissolving her former Venice, Calif.-based company Us 2 Editorial, editor Elisa Bonora has joined Harley’s House, a Santa Monica-based editorial/design and graphics company that services the commercial, music video, trailer and broadcast promo market….Director Ra’uf Glasgow has signed with Dublin Productions, Hollywood, for exclusive spot representation….Spots BME, a Chicago-based post boutique, has added editor Alaric Martin….Richard Sampson, a former freelance and agency producer, has come aboard Pogo Pictures, Atlanta, as its executive producer….Josh Kirsch has ended his eight-year tenure as a composer at JSM, New York, and opened his own shop, Kirsch Electric, also in New York….
MARCH 31, 1995
Director Pascal Baes, formerly handled stateside by bicoastal Crossroads Films, is now being represented for U.S. spotwork via bicoastal 1/33 Productions….Co-directors Erich Joiner and Scott Burns has set up shop in Santa Monica as Tool of North America. Joiner and Burns were noted agency creatives before making the formal plunge into filmmaking….Comedy director Billy Kent, who recently joined Crash Films, Santa Monica, has signed a production deal with Full Blue, New York. The director augmented his deal with Crash Films by signing with Full Blue for office space and access to Full Blue’s stage facility and associated post house Click 3X….Following three years at a facility, postproduction industry veteran Paul Hansil has returned to the manufacturer side, taking the reigns as senior VP of sales and marketing at Accom, Menlo Park, Calif….September Productions, Boston, has added comedy director Neil Salley for exclusive U.S. commercial
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