NBCUniversal global advertising chief Linda Yaccarino has resigned to join Twitter as the next chief executive.
Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed the rent in a tweet Friday.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO!” Musk tweeted. He said she “will mainly focus on business operations, while I will focus on product design and new technology.”
He added, “I look forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”
The announcement comes a day after Musk said through Twitter he would step down from the position and that there would be a new CEO of the social media website, though he did not name the new person. Musk said in his tweet that the person would start in about six weeks.
Yaccarino joined NBCUniversal in 2011 and had risen to the top of the company’s global advertising business. On Monday, the advertising chief was scheduled to participate in NBCUniversal’s Upfront event in New York’s Radio City — the sales presentation the company, along with its media colleagues, gives to the advertising industry each May.
The longtime ad manager brings a wealth of relationships with top marketing executives and other advertising executives to Twitter at a time when the platform has seen advertisers flee — that’s why to lose billions of dollars — after Musk’s acquisition last year.
Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion last October. Soon after, he fired the company’s top executive and laid off thousands of employees.
Many companies have halted their ad spend on the platform since Twitter has seen an increase in offensive language and rhetoric, as various advocacy groups have documented. In an effort to make up for the loss of ad revenue, Musk created a new subscription service, Twitter Blue, which offers features such as the ability to compose longer tweets.
Yaccarino and Musk were inside together a keynote interview at a marketing conference in Florida in mid-April. During the conversation, the two discussed the role marketers play in Twitter’s future, as well as its place in the cultural conversation.
At the conference, Musk Reportedly tried to reassure advertisers that Twitter was a respectable place for their brands.
Yaccarino’s departure from NBCUniversal comes weeks after Jeff Shell was ousted as the company’s CEO after admitting to having an inappropriate relationship with an employee. Instead of replacing Shell, NBCUniversal’s top executives will report to parent company president Mike Cavanagh Comcast.
On Friday, NBCUniversal said Yaccarino would leave the company effective immediately and Mark Marshall, the current president of advertising sales and customer partnerships, would become interim chairman of the company’s advertising and partnerships group.
Marshall will report to Mark Lazarus, President of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. Lazarus and Marshall will likely participate in NBCUniversal’s Upfront presentation on Monday, CNBC’s David Faber and Julia Boorstin reported Friday.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
