Foursquare Names Rosen, Krasniqi As Key Execs

Bolstering its sales efforts, Foursquare has brought in Michael Rosen to oversee brand sales efforts, and Peter Krasniqi to run Pinpoint, along with sales operations and revenue partnerships.

Steven Rosenblatt, Chief Revenue Officer at Foursquare, said the hires will help the company build “a unique business” on top of its own first-party data.

“As we grow, we're bringing in experts with experience building programmatic, native, and performance-based advertising businesses,” Rosenblatt said.

Launched earlier this year, Pinpoint is an ad platform that targets consumers based on the places they’ve been. With its “snap-to-place” technology -- which filters out inaccurate location data -- the platform promises to deliver the precise places that brand audiences go in the real world.

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

Formerly vice president and head of performance at content delivery startup Tapad, Krasniqi is officially assuming the role of vice president and global sales strategy and operations at Foursquare.

Officially vice president of sales at Foursquare, Rosen most recently served as Chief Revenue Officer at First Look Media.

From location-based ad targeting to programmatic partnerships, Pinpoint’s launch was part of Foursquare’s broader efforts to expand its ad operations.

More broadly, Foursquare is still settling in to its 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.

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.

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