Pinterest Hires Two Former Google Executives

Pinterest is building out its advertising team, and it means business.

The visual social media site just announced the hiring of two former Google executives. Jon Alferness, former vp of product management at Google’s shopping and traveling products, joins Pinterest’s ad team as the new head of ad products. Meredith Guerriero, who previously served as Google’s director of programmatic platforms and solutions as well as Facebook’s director of health, grocery and politics, is moving into Pinterest’s head of partnerships position.

Both Alferness and Guerriero have more than 20 years of experience working in advertising-related positions.

Through the hiring of these two execs, Pinterest is hoping to build out its global advertising products that will help better target consumers. In addition to Alferness and Guerriero, Pinterest also hired on former Google exec John Kaplan as the head of its global partnerships.

In February, Pinterest unveiled its new search-targeting tool that allows marketing professionals to get a deeper look into consumers’ search queries.

Kaplan shared Pinterest’s plans for its advertising initiatives moving into the next few years. “We’re specifically targeting search inventory – the real estate of search requires a different level of sophistication and targeting. We’ve never talked to search-engineer marketers before – either the people at the companies that are handling search or the agencies that handle search. What we found is that we’re actually talking to a totally different set of requirements.”

As Pinterest continues to build out its team, it may be safe to say it’s one of the social media companies that can truly compete on the level of Facebook and Twitter in the long run.