MAY 19, 2000
Actor/director Christopher Reeves has signed with TAG Pictures, New York, for representation as a spot helmer….Shooting Gallery Productions, the spot/music video production division of New York-headquartered independent film studio The Shooting Gallery, has signed director/cameraman Allen Weiss….Director/cameraman Charlie Cole has come aboard New York-based production house Lovinger Mahoney Adelson for commercial representation….Publicly traded, Minneapolis-headquartered iNTELEFILM has launched DCODE, a New York firm offering strategic planning, creative, production of commercials and emerging ad forms, and media buying to advertisers and agencies. The new venture is headed by president Bill Perna, an industry veteran experienced on both the ad agency and production house sides of the business….
MAY 19, 1995
London-based director Charlie Paul, formerly with The Underground, Los Angeles, has joined Orbit Productions, Hollywood, for exclusive representation in the U.S. spot market….To facilitate its expansion from a one-director shop, Sandbank Films Co., Hawthorne, N.Y., has hired Deanna Leodas as its first head of sales. Leodas assumed her new staff position following a seven-year stint as head of production at agency Altschiller & Co., New York….Executive producer/managing director Stelio Kitrilakis and head of production Arthur Lang have exited Colossal Pictures, San Francisco. They plan to launch their own production company, probably in the Bay Area and possibly with an office in Los Angeles….Lovinger/Cohn & Associates, New York, the production company owned by director Jeff Lovinger and executive producer Jack Cohn, recently signed noted still photographer Derek Gardner to direct spots….
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