Pete Wong leaves ZenithOptimedia for Google

Prior to this move, Wong was head of digital for ZenithOptimedia China since February 2012 and held a similar role at Mindshare the year before.

At ZenithOptimedia, he managed digital strategy for the entire L'Oreal portfolio of brands, including L'Oreal Paris, Lancome, Maybelline, Vichy, Biotherm, Garnier, and Kiehls, across e-commerce, display, video, search, and mobile.

Wong said Google suffers from a generally bad perception in China. "People don't even know if we are still here," he said, referring to the time Google pulled out of China two and a half years ago when it refused to censor its search results. Google's search market share in China has declined to 4.72 per cent from its peak of 35.6 per cent in the last three months of 2009.

Baidu has since been its main competitor in China, but Wong wants to enhance Google’s brand not just among consumers but also enterprise users with its DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) digital ad management platform.

Wong will market products such as DoubleClick Search, DoubleClick Rich Media and DoubleClick Ad Exchange to agencies and marketers.