Emmy Award-winning entertainment company Zoic Studios has expanded its advertising team, adding Jason Cohon as executive producer, advertising, and RJ Peristere as business development strategist in LA, as well as signing with Carolyn Hill and Amanda Rosenberg of Carolyn Reps for East Coast sales representation. Cohon will bolster Zoic’s advertising division, leveraging its success across television, film and experiential to create brand partnerships that capitalize on Zoic’s expertise blending entertainment and technology to create memorable experiences.
Peristere will spearhead in-house business development out of Zoic’s Culver City headquarters, focusing on growth in the agency and brand-direct spaces. Carolyn Reps is a New York-based production consulting company comprised of advertising and film industry executive Carolyn Hill and agent Amanda Rosenberg. Additional roster clients include Greencard, Kaboom Productions, Odd Machine, Pogo Pictures, Production Service Network (PSN), Saville Productions, THEM Media and Two Fresh Creative. Carolyn Reps will also provide West Coast sales coverage for Zoic.
Zoic SVP Ian Unterreiner said, “After steering the advertising division myself for the last nine years, I’m fortunate to have been able to assemble this team to expand our efforts.”
Cohon began his career on the agency side, landing an assistant account executive role at RPA working on the ARCO/ampm account. Craving more on-set experience, he made the transition into production as a freelance producer for shops including Smuggler and Traktor on commercial and music video projects. Expanding his expertise into postproduction, he spent four years with Digital Domain, producing across its live action, VFX and experiential divisions on projects for clients such as Target, Old Spice, Sony, Microsoft, Chrysler and Nintendo. He continued to fine-tune his skill set producing for award-winning VFX and design shops including Buck and Sway Studios, before landing as executive producer at Brand New School. There, he restructured a wide range of company workflows, including bicoastal sales initiatives, in-house VFX pipelines, new talent hires and company branding. As an EP, he won an Emmy for Ad Council’s “Love Has No Labels” while at Brewster Parsons, multiple awards for the eBay “Give a Toy Store” interactive campaign for Brand New School, a Telly Award for Scion’s “Take on the Machine” stereoscopic films and the Cannes VFX Silver Lion for Mini Countryman’s “Flow.”
The growth of Zoic’s advertising division comes on the heels of successful campaigns for brands including Facebook, Lexus, Final Fantasy, Under Armour and Dr. Pepper. This expansion will continue Zoic’s experience at the cross-section of entertainment and technology, bringing a fusion of traditional and new media approaches to experience-driven campaigns, including an AI film with Team One for the Saatchi New Directors Showcase as well as a real-time animation activation with Leo Burnett Chicago for the Cannes Lions opening and closing galas.
Google Witness At Antitrust Trial Says Government Underestimates Competition For Online Advertising
Federal regulators who say Google holds an illegal monopoly over the technology that matches online advertisers to publishers are vastly underestimating the competition the tech giant faces, an expert hired by Google testified Thursday.
Mark Israel, an economist who prepared an expert report on Google's behalf, said the government's claims that Google holds a monopoly over advertising technology are improperly focused on a narrow market the government defines as "open web display advertising," essentially the rectangular ads that appear on the top and along the right hand side of a web page when a consumer browses the web on a desktop computer.
But the government's case fails to account for a variety of competition that occurs beyond those rectangular boxes, Israel said. In the real world, advertisers have dramatically shifted where they spend money to social media companies like Facebook and TikTok, and online retailers like Amazon.
When you account for all online display advertising, not just the narrow segment defined by the government's case, Google gets just 10% of the U.S. market share as of 2022, he said. That's down from roughly 15% a decade ago.
In addition, advertisers have moved away from placing their ads on the screens of desktop and laptop computers where Google is alleged to control the market, with money migrating to ads placed on apps and mobile device screens. Israel cited marketing data showing display ad spending on desktop and laptop devices has decreased from 71% in 2013 to 17% in 2022.
The government's case "seems to miss where the competition is today," Israel said.
His testimony comes as Google wraps up its defense in the third week of an antitrust trial that began earlier this month in Alexandria,... Read More