Bicoastal The End has added Silke Winter, formerly of CMP, bicoastal and Chicago, to handle East Coast representation, and Dawn Clarke, who had been with bicoastal The Artists Company and The A+R Group, to cover the West Coast. Winter is based at The End’s New York office, while Clarke works out of the shop’s Beverly Hills quarters. Clarke additionally serves as West Coast rep for bicoastal Curious Pictures, which like The End, is part of the iNTELEFILM family of companies….Commercial production house Boxer Films and its B-17 Editorial division, both based in Los Angeles, have secured Rebecca Reber and Brooke Covington to handle West Coast representation, and Chris Messiter to cover the East Coast. Jill Reehl of Chicago-based Get Reehl Representation continues to rep Boxer and B-17 in the Midwest…. Tom Donald Films, San Francisco, has hired Michael Coronado of Irvine, Calif.-based independent firm Coronado Represents for national representation….Cinematographer Michael Wood has joined The Skouras Agency, Santa Monica, for exclusive representation….
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