Snap, the company behind the popular photo messaging app Snapchat, has recruited Eric Young, a former vice president of engineering for Google Cloud, as its new senior vice president of engineering. Young’s appointment is part of Snap’s ongoing efforts to advance its advertising business.
In his role, Young will be responsible for overseeing the core infrastructure of Snap. This includes enhancing Snap’s ability to target and measure advertisements on Snapchat, a task that has become more challenging due to privacy updates on Apple’s iOS devices.
Snapchat has consistently expanded its user base, reaching 750 million monthly users. However, the company has faced difficulties in generating revenue at the same pace. In April, Snap acknowledged the need to simplify user interactions with ads and improve the relevance of advertisements shown to users. These changes had a short-term impact on some advertisers’ results.
During his tenure at Google, Young played a key role in building the technological infrastructure for various products, including search, ads, and YouTube.
Eric Young’s recruitment follows Snap’s recent hiring of Rob Wilk, the former head of advertising at Microsoft, who joined as president of the Americas region. Additionally, Snap brought on board another executive from Google to lead revenue product development.
With the addition of these experienced professionals, Snap aims to strengthen its advertising capabilities, optimize user engagement, and drive revenue growth in the highly competitive digital advertising market.