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Turn Elevates Bill Demas to CEO
Industry Veteran Bill Demas Promoted to CEO to Continue Rapid Growth; Jim Barnett Continues as Chairman
Redwood City, Calif.,—September 10, 2009—Turn Inc., the smart platform for digital advertising, today announced it has elevated president and chief operating officer Bill Demas to the position of chief executive officer as part of the company's long-term succession plan. Jim Barnett, the company's co-founder and CEO who has led the company since its inception, will continue as Chairman.
Demas has been involved with Turn since 2007 when he became part of the board of directors. In December 2008, he joined the executive team as a strategic addition to the company's operational leadership. He was responsible for overseeing Turn's platform solutions group, sales, publisher development, business operations and client services functions.
The Turn platform delivers precision audiences, exceptional performance, and powerful insights through two sources - the exchange trading desks and private networks of global agencies and premium advertisers, and the Turn Network. Over the past year, Turn has seen accelerated adoption of its exchange trading desk product, which powers next generation media buying and optimization for ad agencies and large advertisers. Turn's ad network has also grown tremendously and was recently recognized by comScore as the fastest growing ad network.
"Bill has been an exceptional leader and trusted colleague for many years, and has played a critical role in Turn's remarkable growth. I can't think of anyone more qualified and better suited to take over as CEO of Turn as we continue our rapid growth," said Barnett. "Our vision for Turn was in synch on both sides of the boardroom, and I'm passing the reins knowing that the company is in extraordinarily good hands with Bill."
"Jim's tremendous hard work, vision and leadership skills are what brought Turn from a concept to where it is right now - one of the largest and fastest growing online ad networks, and a strategic technology provider for some of the ad industry's top interactive agencies," said Demas. "I'm excited to be taking over as Turn's CEO when the company is primed to have a direct and measurable impact on the way ad agencies identify audiences and buy online media."
"This is the natural and planned evolution we anticipated when Jim brought Bill on board," said Jeff Crowe, general partner, Norwest Venture Partners, who serves on Turn's board. "From our perspective, the face of our leader might have changed, but our mission is still the same - leveraging Turn's deep technology experience to deliver the right audiences, actionable results and excellent client service to agencies and brands."
Demas brings more than 20 years of successful leadership and operations experience to his new role as CEO. Demas crystallized his advertising industry experience working at Yahoo!/Overture, leading the company's multi-billion dollar distribution network for search marketing. As head of the Yahoo! Publisher Network Group, Demas oversaw business development, product management, marketing, and professional services, building hundreds of exclusive distribution relationships with major Internet sites and publishers. Prior to the acquisition by Yahoo! in 2003, Demas was part of the senior team that guided Overture to revenues of one billion dollars.
Prior to joining Turn, Demas was the president and CEO of MokaFive, a next generation desktop virtualization company. Before his time at Overture, he served as executive vice president at Vividence Corporation (acquired by Keynote), overseeing all aspects of product development and marketing. Previously he held senior consumer product and enterprise business roles at Microsoft including its Encarta Encyclopedia and SQL Server lines. Demas began his career at IBM in technology sales.
In addition to sitting on Turn's Board of Directors, Demas serves on the Board of Directors of Advocates for Children (CASA of San Mateo County) and the advisory boards of DeviceVM and Digital Performance. Demas earned an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, and bachelor degrees in computer science and organizational behavior & management from Brown University.
About Turn Inc.
Turn is the smart platform for digital advertising. Through its advanced platform, Turn delivers precision audiences, exceptional performance and powerful insights to global agencies and premium advertisers. Turn combines predictive targeting, custom behavioral modeling, and powerful analytics to power the rapidly growing Turn network, as well as the exchange trading desks and private networks of leading global agencies. Turn is a leader in digital advertising, serving targeted advertising to over 150 million domestic unique users. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California and has offices in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.turn.com.
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