• by Colin Kirkland , May 15, 2024

For the first time, Reddit -- which is now a public social media platform -- has hired a vice president of ads product -- former Google ads product leader Jyoti Vaidee, who will oversee the platform's monetization engine.

Prior to joining Reddit, Vaidee spent 11 years leading advertising products and monetization at Google, most recently as a product leader for Google's Display Ads business, where she helped with the founding of Dynamic Product Ads.

Vaidee also drove products across Google Shopping ads and YouTube in addition to working at Microsoft, where she worked on large scale consumer products including Outlook and Xbox.

In her new role at Reddit, Vaidee will drive ads product strategy, execution, and management of the Ads Product organization, which Reddit says is “core” to its monetization engine.

Reddit's previous Ads Product and Engineering leader, Shariq Rizvi will be leaving the role after building the company's ad platform from the ground up, the company says.

The creation of a VP of Ads Product role is a result of Reddit's focus on scaling its ads business across the globe since the company announced its IPO in March. Reddit has introduced a plethora of new ad products, including a suite of generative-AI ad creation tools, Dynamic Product Ads, and according to its first earnings report post-IPO, the likelihood of Search Ads.

According to the earnings report, Reddit is off to a good start as a public company, with ad revenue up 39% year-over-year to $222.7 million. Additionally, over 82 million users visit Reddit daily to browse subreddits, while many consumers now include “reddit” in their Google searches to specify their results. In February, Reddit and Google struck a $60 million content licensing deal to help train Google's AI models.

Vaidee said in a statement that it is a very “exciting time” to join the company, which she believes has “untapped potential.”