Martech: Martech is Marketing Logo
  • Topics
    Digital Transformation
    Marketing Operations
    Data
    Customer & Digital Experience
    Performance Marketing
    Marketing Management
    Special Reports
    MarTech Topics
  • Conference
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • What is MarTech
    Mission
    Staff
    Newsletter
    Search Engine Land
    Third Door Media

Processing...Please wait.

MarTech » Performance Marketing » Former Google, Apple Executive RJ Pittman Joins eBay

Former Google, Apple Executive RJ Pittman Joins eBay

Online commerce giant eBay announced Friday that it had hired RJ Pittman as Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer for Marketplaces. His role, which is newly created, does not include PayPal. Pittman was most recently in charge of worldwide e-commerce at Apple. He occupied that role since 2010. Before Apple Pittman was at Google where […]

Greg Sterling on October 20, 2013 at 11:34 am

new ebay logo Online commerce giant eBay announced Friday that it had hired RJ Pittman as Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer for Marketplaces. His role, which is newly created, does not include PayPal.

Pittman was most recently in charge of worldwide e-commerce at Apple. He occupied that role since 2010.

Before Apple Pittman was at Google where he presided over a wide range of properties and projects during his three years there. According to Pitman’s LinkedIn profile he did the following while at Google:

  • Portfolio of products under management include: Image Search, Finance, News, Google Labs, Advanced Search, Video, Blog Search, Google Trends, Music Search, and others
  • Led product strategy, design, and development for over 70 product launches at Google on 4 continents, 40+ languages and countries
  • Led 100-300% annual growth across the various search properties, including the first monetization rollouts for Image Search, News, and Finance
  • Led the overhaul of Google’s “20% time” process to accelerate and invigorate innovation at scale with an all new Google Labs deployed worldwide in 2009
  • Co-lead for consumer search properties UI/UX design decisions for all user-facing search properties worldwide
  • Passionate about the consumer experience, user-centric design, and polishing every pixel on the page
  • Featured spokesperson and technology evangelist for Google. Regular speaker at conferences, panels, press events, and product launches

Before coming to Google Pitman was CEO of Groxis. Groxis developed the “visual search engine” Grokker, which was part of a number of visual search alternatives to Google for several years.

The press release generated by eBay last week said that, in a newly created position, “Pittman will be responsible for leading the eBay’s product and development strategy for Marketplaces, and creating world-class, end-to-end shopping experiences for more than 124 million active users and 25 million sellers.”

An eBay spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that Pittman’s departure from Apple was unrelated to the hiring of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts who will have responsibility for retail stores and e-commerce. Had Pittman remained at Apple presumably he would have reported to Ahrendts.

I spoke briefly to Pittman on Friday. He told me he was very excited about coming to eBay. He said he would be focused on product strategy and “Perfecting the shopping and customer experience” at eBay’s various marketplaces, which include the flagship property but also classifieds sites such as Kijiji and Marktplaats in Europe.

Mobile will be a central focus. “The customer journey is multi-platform today,” said Pittman. He discussed with me how massive volumes of web traffic are coming from mobile in many markets outside the US, such as Thailand, Australia, China, India and Japan.

Pittman’s role and oversight will include design, product and engineering. They’ll be vertically integrated to speed development and time to market, he said, adding that his group will be “working as an agile team with a global perspective.”

Last week eBay reported Q3 earnings. The company’s revenues grew 14 percent year over year to $3.9 billion and modestly beat expectations (marketplaces saw revenue growth of 12 percent) however its Q4 outlook was disappointing to many investors.

Pittman sees a very strong global opportunity for eBay, lead by mobile innovation. Yet PayPal remains the growth engine for the company. Pittman will have to do a bit of reinvention of the user experience (and the brand) in order to fulfill the promise and expectations of his new position.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


New on MarTech

    How clean, organized and actionable is your data?
    Replacement Survey: The top 5 solutions replaced
    What’s the biggest hidden secret in Google Ads?
    Native video tops social media in brand awareness study
    Worsening economy has more shoppers getting online info before making in-store purchases

About The Author

Greg Sterling
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

Related Topics

Performance Marketing

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS The MarTech Conference logo.

September 28-29, 2022: Fall

Start Training Now: Master Classes

Start Discovering Now: Spring



The SMX Conference logo.

Start Training Now:: SMX Advanced

November 14-15, 2022: SMX Next

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes

Webinars

Agencies: Grow Revenue Streams Through Web Accessibility & Compliance

Protect Your Paid Advertising Spend Against Ad Fraud and Invalid Traffic

Build an Integrated Search Strategy Across Google, Amazon and YouTube

See More Webinars
Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports
Featured White Paper

Site Search 101

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • Transformation
  • Operations
  • Data
  • Experience
  • Performance
  • Management
  • All Topics
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX

About

  • What is MarTech
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.