CALIFORNIA – In an attempt to reverse the plunge in the ad revenue, American billionaire Elon Musk has named former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter.
Yaccarino, who spent several years modernizing the advertising business at NBCUniversal owned by Comcast Corp, will take over the micro-blogging website beset with challenges and a heavy debt load.
“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk tweeted on Friday. “@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.”
Advertisers have fled the social media platform since Musk acquired Twitter in October, worried that their ads could appear next to inappropriate content after the company lost nearly 80% of staff. Musk acknowledged earlier this year that Twitter suffered a massive decline in ad revenue.
Lou Paskalis, a longtime ad industry executive and CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, says Twitter’s “trajectory will immediately take a 180-degree turn” under Yaccarino’s leadership. He said, “I think (Yaccarino) has climbed every mountain she could at NBCU and did it impeccably well. And there’s no greater challenge than restoring order at Twitter.”