Keith Ehrlich has joined bicoastal Cohn + Company as East Coast sales rep….House of Usher Films, Santa Monica, has secured Southern California-based independent rep Steven Monkarsh to handle the West Coast, Texas and Detroit….John Buckley has been appointed in-house West Coast rep for Crew Cuts/West, Santa Monica….Chicago-based independent rep firm monaghan+halpine has parted ways with Claire Alden’s art.fx division, a New York-headquartered representatiion shop that handles the U.S. for a roster of animation and effects houses, including London outfits Picasso Pictures, Sherbet, and Frankie & Robin, as well as PSYOP Creative Collective, New York, and Wild Brain, San Francisco….Lisa Cleff has been named VP of sales and marketing for Goodspot Design and Goodspot Editorial, both based in Santa Monica. She formerly served as director of sales & marketing at R!OT Manhattan, New York. Prior to that, she was based at Attik, San Francisco, serving as U.S. director of business development…. Cinematographer Hubert Taczanowski has joined bicoastal Paradigm for exclusive representation in features and commercials. His recent feature credits include Tadpole starring Sigourney Weaver and John Ritter….
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