Snapchat has made a big media hire to help step up its partnerships strategy

Snapchat has hired James Veraldi, the former SVP of strategy and business development at multi-channel network Fullscreen, as its head of strategy and partnerships, Variety reports.

Veraldi will be responsible for building out relationships with media partners for Snapchat's Discover section, which houses ephemeral content from media organizations including BuzzFeed, ESPN, and The Daily Mail. Snapchat has previously claimed the Discover section attracts 60 million users each month.

Business Insider has contacted Snapchat for confirmation. We'll update this article once we hear back.

Veraldi joined Snapchat about a month ago and reports to head of media Nick Bell, according to Variety.

While Veraldi is not the most senior exec responsible for media partnerships - and Snapchat has still yet to announce a direct replacement for its former VP of partnerships Mike Randall, who left in January - his role is a crucial one as Snapchat revs up its monetization engines.

Last year Snapchat generated $3.1 million in revenue, financials leaked to Gawker's Sam Biddle revealed. However, the company only began generating meaningful revenue from October last year.

Discover, where Snapchat is demanding the highest ad rates, didn't launch until January 2015. And a Snapchat spokesperson told Business Insider earlier this month that the company only actively started selling ads on Discover at the end of July.

Snapchat will be hoping Veraldi's experience working with and for digital media companies will help grow out its pool of partners and help extract more revenue from current partners. Business Insider reported last month that Snapchat's recruiters are also actively trying to poach direct-level and another senior sales people from rival digital media platforms including News Corp, Twitter, and a public ad tech company.

Veraldi was most recently a principal at JMV group, which offered consulting and advisory services to media, entertainment, and tech companies. Prior to that he was responsible for strategy and business developmetn at Fullscreen, departing late last year shortly after the company was acquired by AT&T and the Chernin Group's joint venture Otter Media.

In addition to his full-time roles, Veraldi has worked as an advisor and investor to online video company Fuisz Media and also video curation company Magnify.net.

He also used to sit on the board at dog charity K9 Connection, which may well explain why there's a funny video of him eating dog food in front of his colleagues at Fullscreen's office on YouTube.