After 12 years at Google, vice president for the Americas Jon Kaplan is to join Pinterest as head of global sales.

 

According to a report by Re/code, Kaplan starts in San Francisco on 7 March, relocating from New York to fill the role of Joanna Bradford who left in June.

He will report to general manager for monetisation Tim Kendall.

“We’re excited to have Jon Kaplan join Pinterest,” said Kendall. “He has tremendous digital advertising experience and we’re looking forward to even stronger growth of our global ads platform under his leadership.”

Kaplan’s move comes follows a letter sent out to Google advertisers last September alerting them to plans to narrow the focus of its ad business by directly servicing only retail and consumer packaged goods advertisers.

Despite having a much smaller ad division than Google, Pinterest is considered by marketers to have great potential, with an $11bn valuation, as the platform is often used to post images of potential future purchases.

 

He follows in the footsteps of fellow ex-Google colleague Don Faul, who also transferred to Pinterest but left a year ago in “a personal decision”.

Google is yet to comment on Kaplan’s replacement.