• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 9, 2009

Ad network Turn Inc. on Tuesday announced the appointment of Hugh McGoran as its new vice president of sales.

Based out of the company's New York office, McGoran will be expected to manage a national sales team, establishing new client and industry relationships and bringing new products to market.

Launched in 2008, the Turn platform attempts to blend audience, behavioral, contextual, and custom targeting methods for clients in the automotive, travel, telecommunications, gaming, finance and retail sectors. Turn grew by 121% over the past year, making it the fastest-growing ad network online, according to data released by comScore in April. That month, Turn reached 134 million U.S. Web users.

"Turn is the fastest growing ad platform according to comScore and an extremely progressive company," said McGoran. "This combination delivers exceptional results."

By comparison, AOL's Platform-A reached nearly 176.5 million Web users in April, according to comScore, followed by Yahoo Network -- at 167.1 million -- and Google Ad Network -- at 164.5 million.

McGoran most recently served as SVP of advertising sales at New York-based online semantic advertising company Peer39. Previously, he spent three years at Tacoda, where he served as the vice president of eastern advertising sales and led the Tacoda sales integration into AOL´s Platform A when the company was acquired in 2007.

Prior to Tacoda, Hugh spent nine years at Knight Ridder Digital, with four years at Real Cities as vice president of advertising sales.

Late last year, Turn hired Yahoo/Overture executive Bill Demas to the role of president and chief operating officer. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, the company also has offices in Chicago and San Francisco. To date, Turn has raised over $37 million from inventors, including Focus Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Shasta Ventures.