Snap Inc. announced on Monday the appointment of Eric Young, a former Google executive, as its new Senior Vice President of Engineering. The latest in a series of strategic hires, Young’s appointment aims to advance Snap’s advertising business.
Young previously served as the Vice President of Engineering for Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud. In his new role at Snap, he will oversee the core infrastructure for the company, which owns the popular photo messaging app Snapchat. Additionally, Young will lead efforts to enhance Snap’s ad targeting and measurement capabilities on Snapchat, a task made more challenging by recent privacy updates on Apple’s iOS devices.
Despite consistently growing its audience to 750 million monthly users, Snap Inc has struggled to generate revenue at a similar pace. In April, the company announced steps to streamline user interactions with ads and boost ad relevance, acknowledging that these efforts might have short-term adverse effects on some advertisers.
Young’s tenure at Google involved working on the technical infrastructure for products such as search, ads, and YouTube. His appointment at Snap is preceded by the hiring of Rob Wilk, former head of advertising at Microsoft Corp, as President of the Americas region, and another Google executive to lead revenue product.
