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Pinterest Inc. is again paying up to acquire talent as it builds out an image search engine based on its users' intent.

The image-discovery site on Tuesday said it has acquired half the staff at URX, a San Francisco mobile advertising service co-founded by a former Google manager. As is the case with many of Pinterest's purchases, this one was more about acquiring people over tech, a company spokeswoman said.

URX's technology and assets will be shut down. But Pinterest gains URX co-founder and chief executive John Milinovich, who will join as a product manager. Before starting URX, Mr. Milinovich was at Alphabet Inc.'s Google, where he worked on the Google Analytics team and helped roll out the Google Offers coupon service.

About 15 URX employees, including the other three co-founders, will also move over to Pinterest, joining the product-management, engineering and partnerships team.

Pinterest declined to disclose financial terms of the deal, which is its 11th acquisition. The deal was mostly comprised of stock, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The company is replenishing its talent after losing some high-profile managers in recent months, a common scenario at startups in a rapid growth phase. Most recently, Pinterest's head of engineering Michael Lopp left the company in April after joining two years ago, according to the company spokeswoman. Mr. Lopp had previously worked at Palantir Technologies and Apple Inc.

URX—started in early 2013 by four former classmates at the University of California, Los Angeles—specializes in so-called deep links on the mobile Web. In essence, it serves ads in mobile browsers that take users to apps such as Spotify or SeatGeek where they can take actions such as listening to a song or buying tickets to a concert.

Deep linking has become increasingly important to Google, Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and other Web companies as users shift to mobile devices and spend more time in apps. The technology aims to add ways to enable people to move seamlessly between specific pages in different apps.

Pinterest says it was intrigued by the URX team's expertise in matching user intent with results as it is builds a "discovery engine" driven by smart recommendations. For example, if a user on Pinterest starts a "board"—where people save a collection of images, or "pins"—and names it "nursery," Pinterest would take that as a cue to surface items such as cribs and other family-friendly items.

At Pinterest, URX employees will work on search and discovery, which focuses on understanding the data behind each pin; and rich pins. Rich pins carry extra bits of information, such as the ingredients for a recipe, and aim to help people take actions such as installing an app or buying a product.

Pinterest, valued at $11 billion by investors last year, is working to turn its service into a global one as it seeks to ramp up its advertising business. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that Pinterest made about $100 million in revenue from advertising in 2015.

URX, incorporated as AdLast Inc., had raised about $15 million in funding from investors including venture-capital firms Accel Partners and First Round Capital, and angel investors such as actress Jamie Lee Curtis and former football player Joe Montana.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 03, 2016 13:25 ET (17:25 GMT)

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