• September 10, 2009

Online ad network Turn Inc. has named President and Chief Operating Officer Bill Demas its new chief executive, succeeding co-founder Jim Barnett as CEO. Barnett will continue as chairman.

Demas joined Turn as a board member in 2007 after serving as CEO of technology startup MokaFive, and before that, as head of the Yahoo publisher network group, overseeing the Web portal's relationships with third-party sites and publishers. He is also a former Overture and Microsoft executive.

"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, in a statement. Launched last year, the Turn network aims to blend audience, behavioral, contextual, and custom targeting methods for clients in the automotive, travel, finance, retail and other sectors.

The Turn ad platform in July reached 63% of U.S. Internet users, or 124 million people, according to comScore's Ad Focus ranking. In July, Turn launched two new offerings aimed at agencies and media buyers -- a self-service system for managing multiple ad networks and exchanges, and a private ad network for agencies that buy for large individual clients.

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. --Mark Walsh