Pinterest ad boss Tim Kendall is leaving the company

rvlsoft / Shutterstock.com

Pinterest’s president and advertising boss Tim Kendall will leave the company at the end of this year, a Pinterest spokesperson confirmed on Thursday after Recode reported the news.

“Tim Kendall is leaving Pinterest after nearly six years to start his own venture. Tim has made important contributions to Pinterest and we are pleased that he will continue to serve as an advisor to the company,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Replacing Kendall as the head of the company’s advertising business will be Jon Alferness, a longtime Google exec Pinterest poached in July 2017 to serve as its head of ad products. Alferness has been promoted to senior VP of ads and commerce and will report directly to Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann.

The former director of monetization at Facebook joined Pinterest in 2012 to build up its then-nonexistent advertising business. And he has. Overseeing the launch of Promoted Pins in 2014 and the subsequent expansion of Pinterest’s ad business into search and video advertising, Kendall helped the company to generate $300 million in revenue last year.

Fortunately for Pinterest, Kendall’s replacement is particularly well-pedigreed to lead advertising for a shopping-adjacent, search-heavy platform. During his 12-year tenure at Google, Alferness worked on Google’s ad business, including search and mobile display ads, and eventually was tapped to be VP of product management for Google’s shopping and travel search platforms.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.