The North Coast is home to many successful tech entrepreneurs, including Jason Knapp, executive vice president of product at Specific Media and Myspace.

To those who don’t follow the world of digital media and advertising, Knapp, a resident of Solana Beach since 2002, hasn’t become a household name yet. But to anyone who has ever surfed the Web, his innovations likely have caught their attention.

“I wouldn’t say that this job is full of glory,” said Knapp, whose charge is to analyze what’s going on in the world of Internet advertising, decide which products need to be made or changed, then develop those products and introduce them into the marketplace. “By the time we come out with a product, we’re already working on the next big idea, so I barely get a chance to pay attention to it.”

Among his numerous marketing developments, Knapp is credited with being the visionary who developed the idea for the world’s first real-time bidding (RTB) platform, which in the blink of an eye allows for the efficient trading of online display advertising, one ad impression at a time, similar to how stocks are traded. An impression is the measure of how many times an ad, such as a banner, is shown on a Web page or email message.

RTB has become the new standard for how advertising is traded on the Internet between advertisers and publishers, Knapp said. He added that in the first year of its implementation, more than 1 trillion ad trades were transacted using the new system, which led to the birth of an industry based on trading ad impressions using predictive systems.

Knapp doesn’t consider himself a visionary, but he said that it’s frustrating not being able to execute more ideas because of limited time and resources. He added that the best ideas don’t always get the most attention when feasibility and speed-to-market factors must be considered.

“If we hadn’t done real-time bidding, someone else would have, so I don’t want to take too much credit,” Knapp said. “But we definitely changed the industry.”

Knapp, a self described “serial entrepreneur,” was raised in Fresno and holds an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA. He’s been a co-founder, board member and seed investor in more than 14 tech startups. In 2007, Strategic Data Corp., of which Knapp and longtime friend Fabrizio Blanco were on the founding team, was acquired by News Corp. for $140 million.

Knapp then joined Specific Media, an ad-targeting firm, which in partnership with Justin Timberlake bought the remnants of Myspace, one of the top social media platforms on the Internet. He is currently involved in reintroducing the brand, which has been rebuilt from the ground up.

Still in the beta stage and available by invitation only, the new Myspace, Knapp said, will not go head-to-head with social network giant Facebook, but will instead position itself as a music platform to capitalize on its collection of more than 42 million songs.

“We have the music collections of all the major music labels including many artists and local bands that uploaded all of their music directly to Myspace that you can’t find anywhere else on the Web,” Knapp said. “We’re positioned to fill a gap that no one else has. I call it a discovery platform.”

When he isn’t searching for or implementing new Internet advertising strategies, Knapp enjoys the scenery and tranquility of his Solana Beach neighborhood.

Married and the father of two school-aged children, Knapp said he is a strong supporter of education in his community. On weekends, his family participates in raising funds and building homes in the Colonia Cumbres district of Tijuana as part of a local charitable organization called Casas de Luz. Knapp also advocates for the use of plug-in vehicles, powered by domestically produced and renewable sources of electricity, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and minimize greenhouse emissions.

Manny Lopez is a North County freelance writer