GrabAds makes slew of hires from adtech industry

GrabAds is making several new hires to grow its team. It has hired Jennie Johnson, as the head of marketing, Kaia Lai as head of product for search and personalisation technology, Christina Lin as product marketing lead for ads and personalisation technology, Kareen Mendoza as regional financial services partnership lead, and Wong Yi Ling as head of sales operations.

Johnson, who has acquired 15 years of experience in marketing and communications, was formerly the senior director of marketing for Southeast Asia for adtech company The Trade Desk and held positions at Appier and Google. She will be leading brand building and demand generation to accelerate growth. 

Lai, formerly the head of product, strategy, marketing and operations for Grab, will now lead company-wide efforts to build a unified search strategy and platform for Grab. Meanwhile, Lin will drive the adoption of GrabAds’ full-funnel advertising solutions and work closely with product development to build solutions to help businesses harness the Grab ecosystem. Lin was previously working with Facebook for over 10 years as the product marketing manager.

Mendoza formerly led regional financial services brand partnerships at TikTok and sales of data services at audience measurement company Comscore, and will be supporting financial services advertisers to engage high value audiences through GrabAds. Finally, Wong will be driving sales operational efficiencies for the team and advertisers. She was with Criteo, an online display advertising company, previously as its senior sales operating manager for APAC.

“We continue to build technology that connect advertisers with the millions of consumers who use Grab to commute, eat and shop every day. I’m thrilled to welcome these leaders, who will be instrumental in furthering the GrabAds mission: helping merchants and advertisers build their brand while driving real world sales impact using Southeast Asia’s leading superapp,” said Ken Mandel, regional managing director and head of GrabAds and brand insights said.

In Grab’s Environment, Social and Governance report, it announced its commitment to increasing the percentage of women in leadership roles. Grab wants to include diverse voices in management positions to ensure varying views in crafting and implementing policies and decisions.

Grab relaunched HungryGoWhere very recently and its accompanying social media channels a year after the food site shut down. The revamped HungryGoWhere brand aims to address the growing interest of diners to reconnect with the local food scene in much deeper ways. 

Just a few weeks ago, Grab has rolled out a new enterprise service, GrabMaps to provide more hyperlocal solutions. This allowed Grab to tap into the US$1 billion market opportunity in Southeast Asia per year for mapping and location-based services.

Grab Financial Group had also launched a new brand, GrabFin in May, for its digital payment, insurance, lending and wealth management offerings. With GrabFin, Grab users are offered a single entry point to access payment, investment and insurance services on the Grab app. Following its launch in Singapore and Malaysia, the GrabFin brand will be progressively rolled out in other Southeast Asian markets in the coming months. 

Related articles:

Grab rolls out GrabMaps: A bigger push into location based marketing for B2B players?
Grab consolidates financial offerings under new brand GrabFin
Grab SG breathes new life into HungryGoWhere, retains red hue