Hustle, a strategic business development and management agency representing creative and production talent, has gone bicoastal with the appointment of Mike Lobikis as partner/talent rep for the West Coast. This extends the sales force’s representation of production company Partizan into the West Coast market, in addition to its ongoing duties in the East. This added reach follows growth in the New York office, since Hustle added to its group by bringing on Jenn Johnson, president of NY-based firm Open Season, as a partner. Johnson’s background as both an agency producer and rep for top studios like B-Reel, Radical, and Identity, has quickly proven to be invaluable to the growth of the firm. Hustle has an expansive East Coast live-action roster led by NY-based partner Anya Zander, including Partizan, Ruffian, Tool of NA, Sweetshop, Humble, Whitehouse Post, and NO6. The partnership with Lobikis signifies the expansion of Hustle’s live-action offering on the West Coast, where it also currently reps experience/design companies such as MediaMonks, Jam3, and Resn (under the leadership of Hustle founder Jake Neske.) Lobikis has spent the past decade representing award-winning creative talent. Most recently serving as executive producer at MassAppeal, Lobikis produced content for brands including Nike, Patron, and Asics, while finding niche, direct-to-brand ways to elevate the studio’s offering, including creating SoundCloud’s first-ever advertising campaign. Prior to that, Lobikis served as head of development at Tool where he was instrumental in leading a global business development team and building partnerships with myriad clients to great success. Lobikis will serve as the LA-based counterpart to NY-based Zander, who has been at the helm of Hustle for the past six years, since she merged her own repping firm with the company. At that time, Zander brought on senior sales agent Andrew Michaeloff from Partizan, and together they grew the live-action division, as well as their post/VFX/design and music offering, while Neske focused on building the interactive side…..
DP Luca Del Puppo has joined Innovative Artists for representation in both commercials and narrative. He has worked on films such as Slender Man and with brands such as Levi’s, Toyota, Gillette and Haagen Dazs….
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 โ 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