Turn Appoints Former Yahoo Executive as President and COO
Strategic Leader Bill Demas Joins Executive Team to Continue Accelerating Rapid Growth
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Dec. 22 -- Turn Inc., the smart market for online advertising, today announced the appointment of industry veteran Bill Demas to the role of president and chief operating officer. Demas will be responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Turn's sales, publisher development, client services, and market optimization functions and will report directly to Turn's CEO and chairman, Jim Barnett. Demas, who has served as an advisor for the company since 2007, will also maintain his role on the board of directors.
Since the market's official launch in March 2008, Turn has been one of the fastest growing ad networks as reported by comScore, seeing dramatic growth month-over-month in unique users and page views. Demas will be joining the team at a time when the company is poised for continued growth.
"Bill is an extraordinary addition to our leadership team. His multi-faceted industry experience and ability to significantly grow businesses is an ideal fit for Turn," said Barnett. "We are looking forward to this partnership and are eager to utilize Bill's strategic and operational expertise to continue our dramatic growth."
Demas brings more than twenty years of operations experience and successful leadership to Turn. Demas crystallized his advertising industry experience during his time at Yahoo/Overture where he led the company's multi-billion dollar distribution network for search marketing to Internet-based businesses and publishers of all sizes. As head of the Yahoo Publisher Network Group, Demas oversaw business development, product development, 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 helped guide Overture to revenues of a billion dollars.
Demas began his career in technology as part of the sales group at IBM and then spent six years at Microsoft holding a variety of consumer product and enterprise business roles from Encarta Encyclopedia to SQL Server. He then served as Vividence Corporation's executive vice president overseeing all aspects of product development and marketing.
Most recently, Demas was the president and CEO of MokaFive, a next generation desktop virtualization company. At MokaFive, Demas was responsible for launching the company, leading overall strategy, and guiding day-to-day operations. Demas also holds seats on advisory boards for 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.
"I'm thrilled with this opportunity -- a leading marketplace for online advertising, a revolutionary technology platform, a world-class leadership team and development process, and radically higher quality and service standards. I couldn't be more excited," commented Demas. "As President and COO, I am committed to continuing to leverage the considerable advantages that Turn has established and help to further our success."
As the world's first smart market for online advertising, Turn delivers performance for advertisers by combining revolutionary behavioral modeling and predictive targeting technologies with radically higher inventory quality and service standards.
About Turn Inc.
Turn is the world's first smart market for online advertising. Employing revolutionary machine learning technology, the Turn smart market combines automatic targeting and goal-driven pricing to deliver superior performance for over 500 premium advertisers and maximize revenue for more than 3,000 high-quality publisher websites. Turn is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit http://www.turn.com/ .
Turn Contact:
Thai Arizpe
Marketing Director
(650) 353-4378
thai at turn.com
