Bradley Horowitz, VP of product for Google+. Michael Seto for Business Insider Google+, Google's year-old social network, is often criticized for being a ghost town, another failed attempt by the search giant to tap into the social web.

Not so, said Bradley Horowitz, Google+'s VP of product, at our IGNITION conference today.

In addition to touting Google+'s user stats (400 million registered users, including 100 million who visit the mobile app or website at least once a month), Horowitz took some time to slam Facebook's strategy of shoving ads in your news feed.

He used the metaphor of a guy with a sandwich board running in between an intimate conversation between a man and his daughter, an obvious allusion to the ads and promoted brands you see in your Facebook news feed.

Instead, Horowitz said it's much more useful (and less annoying) to users to show social recommendations instead of ads. For example, if you search for a product in Google –– say a microwave –– you can see which one your Google+ contacts recommend.

"It turns out recommendations are very valuable to users without compromising the user experience," Horowitz said.

Unlike Facebook, "we don't have to make next week's payroll by jamming ads at users," Horowitz added.

Watch the entire interview with Horowitz below:

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