Tech giant Google has appointed Vidhya Srinivasan — an ad exec who previously led product and engineering for Google’s core search, maps, and shopping formats – to take over from Jerry Dischler who spearheaded Google’s advertising efforts around the Chrome web browser as the company phases out third-party browser cookies.

NEW YORK – Tech giant Google has appointed Vidhya Srinivasan — an ad exec who previously led product and engineering for Google’s core search, maps, and shopping formats – to take over from Jerry Dischler who spearheaded Google’s advertising efforts around the Chrome web browser as the company phases out third-party browser cookies.

“After more than 15 years on Google’s ads business, Jerry Dischler decided to take on a new challenge,” Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Knowledge & Information at Google, wrote in a statement. “Our ads business helps millions of businesses thrive and we’re grateful to Jerry for his many accomplishments in this area.”

Dischler led Google’s focus on new ad targeting and measurement techniques designed to work for advertisers, consumers, and satisfy regulators.

As the company moves further into consumer privacy and implements changes based on artificial intelligence, Srinivasan will oversee all ad services, including ad formats on YouTube and programmatic advertising.

In September, during Google’s antitrust trial Dischler told the U.S. Justice Department that for some queries, the company may have increased prices as much as 10%. He also said that in 2020, search ads earned the company more than $100 billion. The Justice Department said Google’s ad revenue growth has consistently been in the “high teens” since 2012.

Raghavan called Srinivasan “a seasoned leader” with deep technical expertise, in advertising as well as in all types of technology.

Shashi Thakur will step into Srinivasan’s previous role, supporting ads for Google’s core business and reporting to her. 

Thakur previously worked on many of Google’s core products — including Search, Discover and Shopping during his 17 years with the company — most recently on long term strategy in Raghavan’s Knowledge and Information organization.

Srinivasan joined Google four years ago from Amazon Web Services, and also worked at IBM. At Google, she supported generative AI (GAI) features for Google ads and AI-based tools such as Performance Max, as well as ad measurement tools and Google Analytics.

Courtesy Mediapost