• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 19, 2011

Josh-Shatkin Margolis, Magnetic founder and former CEO, seems to have a successful habit of mixing things up. On Thursday, the company, which launched in 2008, will announce James Green's appointment as head. Green is an ad industry veteran with experience in the movie industry. He worked at various media/tech companies in CEO posts, including Giant Real,  PVI and  24/7 Real Media. In the late 1990s, he worked as a vice president, marketing at Pixar Animation Studios, reporting to Steve Jobs.

After starting four companies, Green is ready to take on the CEO spot at Magnetic. The company supports display ad retargeting with search data. He will focus on driving overall company expansion and build out Magnetic's search retargeting infrastructure.

During his year-long sailing excursion, from October 2010 until now, Green had time to think. Two trends in the ad industry stood out during the journey: data and technology. "I've been hired before to turn around companies having difficulties, and I didn't want to do that this time," he said. "I wanted to join a team in a company poised for growth. Magnetic is driven by technology and data."

There is no more compelling time to put an ad in front of someone than when they search for a specific product, Green said. Think of the model as intent-based search. Search data offers the highest degree of intent when it comes to targeting ads. About two-thirds of digital ad spend is spent on search engine marketing, but only 4% of the users' time is on a search engine, a mantra ingrained in Margolis' head.

Rather than create a standard audience segment to target ads, Magnetic will choose keywords that relate to a specific brand.  That means custom segments get created for each advertiser. The segment includes a set of terms that the company believes the consumer intends to buy.