The incoming CEO of Twitter is reportedly NBCUniversal Chairman, Global Advertising & Partnerships Linda Yaccarino.
Yaccarino is in talks for the role, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (May 11), citing unnamed sources.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted earlier Thursday that he had hired a new CEO, but he did not identify the person.
“She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” he said in the tweet.
Yaccarino has been with NBCUniversal in advertising roles for about 12 years and was with Turner (formerly Turner Broadcasting System) for about 20 years before that, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Her LinkedIn profile says she “has reengineered NBCUniversal’s advertising business for the 21st century.”
“With her skills for operationalizing at scale, she was the first to revolutionize how the sales teams mobilized in the marketplace by developing a unified, tech-enabled trading system: NBCUniversal’s One Platform,” the profile says. “Further, she’s leading the company’s first-ever enterprise-level data strategy, including the launch of NBCUnified — a first-party identity platform that brings together consumer insights from every NBCU division.”
The WSJ report says that at NBCUniversal, Yaccarino has been an advocate for improving measurements of the effectiveness of advertising, was key to the launch of ad-supported streaming service Peacock and oversees $13 billion in annual ad revenue.
An earlier WSJ report said Yaccarino interviewed Musk on stage on April 18 at the Possible marketing conference.
During the interview, Musk sought to reassure advertisers that Twitter is an appropriate platform for brands, and Yaccarino questioned him about controversial tweets he had made, the April 18 report said.
Twitter’s relationship with advertisers became an issue shortly after Musk walked into the company’s headquarters as the new owner and CEO on Oct. 27, 2022.
In a Nov. 4, 2022, tweet, Musk said the social media platform had seen “a massive drop in revenue” because activist groups were pressuring advertisers to leave the platform after he acquired it.
The tweet came as activists protested potential changes in how Twitter would moderate content. Musk countered in his tweet that the platform’s content moderation hadn’t changed, and the company had tried to “appease” activists.
In his Thursday tweet saying he had hired a new CEO, Musk said he will transition to being executive chair and chief technology officer, focusing on product.