Cindy Moran and Jeanne Rashford of Chicago-based Moran & Rashford are now handling Midwest representation for Maysles Films, New York.…West Los Angeles-based Original Film has hired independent rep firm S+W (Susan Bennett and Whitney Kiely) to handle the West Coast and Texas…Independent reps Darr Hawthorne and Terry Seward have signed Avalon Films, Santa Monica and Detroit. They will handle the West Coast and Texas for Avalon helmers Dan Hackett, Larry August and Barry Meier…Rachel Finn and Mary Saxon of FinnSaxon Represent, Santa Monica and San Francisco, are hand-ling the West Coast and Texas for San Francisco-based Hank Smith Music. Additionally, Finn and Saxon will now jointly cover the same territories for Compulsive Pictures, New York, and Hollywood-based Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials, which had both been represented exclusively by Finn….Anne White has shifted from an executive producer’s post to VP of business development at 3 Ring Circus, a Hollywood-based entertainment branding company…..Henninger Richmond, an editorial/post/ design/effects house in Richmond, Va., has added sales associate Julie Herring…..DP Joel Ransom is again available for commercials via Los Angeles-based Orlando Management after wrapping the HBO miniseries A Band of Brothers, which entailed six months of shooting in the U.K….
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