Directors Adam Reed, Valerio Ventura and Kurt Burk have joined Santa Monica-based BeachHouse Films. Reed comes over from Elsewhere, Los Angeles. BeachHouse becomes Ventura’s first formal roost for U.S. spot representation. And Burk is a recent Art Center graduate…..Director Enno Jacobsen has come aboard Right Brain Films, Beverly Hills, for exclusive spot representation. He continues to be handled in Europe by Neue Sentimental Film, Frankfurt, Germany…..Venice, Calif.-based visual effects studio Digital Domain has formed an alliance with Richard A. Greenberg for the production of feature film title graphics. Greenberg was a founding partner in the graphics studio R/Greenberg Associates, New York, and has worked on features, trailers, shorts, spots and visual effects. His main titles credits include Mission Impossible 2, The Matrix, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The World According to Garp, Braveheart, JFK, Twister, Back to the Future and Tootsie….JSM has opened a satellite office in Venice, Calif. JSM/West will be headed up by executive producer Victoria Villalobos, who will be relocating to the West Coast….New York postproduction facility Moving Images is opening a film developing lab at the end of September. The new company, called the Lab at Moving Images, has secured Domenic Rom, formerly executive VP of DuArt Film and Video, New York, to run the service.
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