After months of vowing to leave the position vacant, Elon Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino, a seasoned media executive, as Twitter’s new CEO on Friday.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome Linda Yaccarino to Twitter as its new CEO. On Friday, Musk tweeted something. He claimed that she “will primarily focus on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.”
Yaccarino made her intention to leave her position as chairman of global partnerships and advertising at NBCUniversal earlier in the day.
She stated in a statement on Friday that it had been “an absolute honor” to work with Comcast NBCUniversal and to head the “most incredible team.” “Our company and the industry as a whole have changed,”
As CEO, Yaccarino will deal with a plethora of issues that accumulated when Musk was the company’s owner, such as an exodus of advertisers, service interruptions, regulatory scrutiny, and an expanding list of competitors. Some veteran Twitter users have become hostile toward Musk because of his divisive policy changes and pronouncements.
Even after stepping down as CEO, Musk is likely to retain a sizable amount of influence over the company’s future course. In addition to becoming the platform’s owner, Musk earlier declared that he would act as the company’s executive chairman and chief technology officer.
Musk, a seasoned media executive, has fought with established media channels and declared his hatred of advertising. However, Yaccarino stands for both of those worlds.
Yaccarino has worked at NBCUniversal for more than 11 years, making a comeback to the organization where she first interned while in college. Prior to that, she served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of advertising sales, marketing, and acquisitions at Turner Broadcasting, which at the time included CNN.
According to her company page, she is in charge of NBCUniversal’s 2,000-person international workforce. That would mean that her team has more employees than Twitter, which Musk claimed in an interview with the BBC last month is down to 1,500 after numerous layoffs under his leadership.
According to her profile, NBCUniversal’s ad sales team has made $100 billion in ad sales since she joined in 2011 and has partnered with numerous new media businesses, including Twitter as well as Apple News, Buzzfeed, Snapchat, and YouTube.At a business conference last month, she made an appearance with Musk for a session titled “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships.”
Rather than having 15 distinct sales teams contact the same advertisers, Yaccarino’s most remarkable accomplishment at NBCUniversal was the creation of consolidated ad sales teams.
In an interview with Salesforce, she described the consolidation by saying, “We were difficult to do business with.”
For NBCUniversal, the departure of Yaccarino comes at a horrible moment. The media industry’s ad sales are declining, which has led to cost reduction and occasionally layoffs at numerous organizations. NBCUniversal has also made some job losses, albeit fewer than some of its competitors.
Next week, media organizations, including NBC, are set to present “upfront” to advertisers in an effort to secure ad commitments for later in the year. Monday morning is the scheduled time for NBC.
Yaccarino won’t be the first or only woman to lead one of Musk’s businesses.
To lead SpaceX, Musk previously hired Gwynne Shotwell. He is the CEO, and she is the company’s president and chief operating officer. However, she is regarded by some in the business with helping SpaceX become the most prosperous commercial rocket firm in the world.
Tesla’s chairman is also Robyn Denholm. She took over that position from Musk when the SEC ordered him to step down as a result of a tweet in which he falsely claimed to have funding secured to take the firm private. In reality, he had not yet acquired the financing to do so.
At Tesla, Denholm has maintained a low profile, declining to speak at an investor day earlier this year where Musk and 15 other Tesla officials also gave speeches.
Twitter’s exodus of sponsors
Yaccarino’s selection might be a sign that Musk is beginning to see the limits of his efforts to wean Twitter off of advertising.
Before Musk bought the business in October, ad sales made up more than 90% of its revenue. But since then, the site has lost a lot of advertising.
Based on data until January 25, digital marketing monitoring company Pathmatics by Sensor Tower earlier this year revealed that 625 of the top 1,000 Twitter advertisers, including well-known companies like Coca-Cola, Jeep, Wells Fargo, and Merck, had removed their ad budgets. The numbers show that between October and January 25, the monthly revenue from those former top 1,000 advertisers fell by more than 60%, from around $127 million to little over $48 million.
Many advertisers are concerned about Musk’s drastic staff reductions, the apparent surge in hate speech, and contentious policy decisions, such as his decision to allow previously banned Twitter users back.
General Motors announced that it will stop spending money on Twitter advertising while it assesses the service’s “new direction.” According to Musk, the reason for the flight was “activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation.”
Musk has attempted to boost revenue by competing to strengthen its subscription business and charging for the blue checkmarks that confirm a user’s identification, but his efforts have met with only patchy success. He might not have much of a choice but to improve Twitter’s main advertising business by rekindling its connections with advertisers.
Musk has previously discussed how enhancing the advertising’ relevancy may increase ad purchases.
to locate a new Twitter CEO under pressure
The share price of Tesla (TSLA) has declined ever since he initially stated his desire to acquire Twitter. Investors were scared that his obsession with Twitter would cause him to get preoccupied and ignore the difficulties the electric manufacturer was encountering.
Just prior to Tuesday’s annual shareholder meeting of Tesla, Musk made the CEO announcement.
In comparison to where they were 13 months ago, when his initial purchase of a 9% interest in Twitter was made public, Tesla stock finished Thursday down 55%. Tesla stock gained 3% in early Friday trade right after the market opened before regaining the majority of that gain.
“We believe Musk leaving CEO of Twitter earlier than originally thought… is a positive development for Tesla as well as SpaceX with Musk needing to spend more and more time on these golden child platforms instead of Twitter,” wrote Dan Ives, analyst with Wedbush, in a note to clients on Friday.
Users of Twitter might find it to be good news as well. Last October, after 57% of individuals who took part in a poll Musk held on Twitter voted that he should resign, Musk stated he would appoint a new CEO to lead Twitter. He promised to appoint a replacement “as soon as I find someone stupid enough to take the job” in December.
