• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 24, 2015

To sell the dream of location-based ad targeting, Foursquare has added several executives to its growing sales team.

Andy Chapman, who most recently served as vice president of agency relations for Channel Factory, has been named head of agency development.

Tyler Simmons has left The Exchange Lab to join Foursquare as its director of programmatic partnerships. In his new role, Simmons is focused on Pinpoint -- a new ad platform that targets consumers based on the places they’ve been.

With its “snap-to-place” technology -- which filters out inaccurate location data -- Pinpoint promises to deliver the precise places that brand audiences go in the real world.

“We're helping clients comfortably transition to a cookie-less world where accurate location data provides a whole new way for clients to connect the digital and physical world,” Steven Rosenblatt, chief revenue officer at Foursquare, said on Thursday.

Regarding the new hires, Rosenblatt said: “We are committed to investing in talent who understand how … clients think and help us build a full service end-to-end stack.”

Adding to Foursquare’s efforts around Pinpoint, Robert Campos has come on as a campaign manager. Previously with Horizon Media, Campos is managing programmatic activation and insights for Pinpoint.

Jake Sinsheimer has come over from Xaxis to assume the role of manager of programmatic partnerships at Foursquare, while Tom Wolfstein has been named monetization product manager.

Brands that are already putting Pinpoint to use include Samsung, FedEx, Coors Light, at&t, Olive Garden, Land Rover, and Wild Turkey Bourbon.

The promise of location-based social networking has never been brighter. By 2016, 90% of smartphones will be enabled with GPS technology, and as a result, the global, real-time, mobile location-based advertising and marketing market is expected to reach $9 billion by 2017.

Foursquare is still trying to regain its footing after making the drastic decision to divide itself into two distinct apps. One, named Swarm, does what people have long associated with the Foursquare brand -- it allows people to check in to physical locations and become the “mayor” of local establishments. Another, more Yelp-like service, took the Foursquare name.