New Faces
Steve Stone is launching ad agency Heat in San Francisco. Stone was a founding partner/executive creative director at Black Rocket Euro RSCG, San Francisco….Scott Linnen and Rob Strasberg have been promoted to VPs/creative directors at Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami. Both had been VPs/associate creative directors….Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica, has added senior art director Tito Melega and senior copywriter Bill Bayne. Both will be assigned to the Acura account. Melega comes over from Team One, El Segundo, Calif. Bayne had been at GSD&M, Austin, Texas….
Account Movement
Information technology firm EDS has selected Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), New York, to handle its creative account….Young & Rubicam, San Francisco, will handle creative duties for the Sunkist soft drink….Butler, Shine & Stern, Sausalito, Calif., has been awarded Sun Microsystems’ ad account….Lukoil, the Russian oil company with several gas stations in the U.S., has awarded its ad account to Arnold Worldwide, Boston….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