Inside Linda Yaccarino's Twitter CEO role and what advertisers think

On Friday, advertising leaders, who are close to Yaccarino, said that Musk’s blasé reveal of a major industry shakeup with a tweet shows exactly why he needs Yaccarino. “That speaks volumes to his inability to reign in his voice,” said Lou Paskalis, CEO and founder of AJL Advisory, a marketing consulting firm. Paskalis also was an avid Twitter advocate from the pre-Musk days, and he has strong ties to digital advertising trade groups and brand leaders.

Now, Yaccarino is coming to Twitter to repair relationships with brands and marketers, which often were frayed by ill-considered tweets from Musk since he took over in October. Advertising executives said that Yaccarino has a golden opportunity to restore brand trust in Twitter, as she is known as a sharp negotiator and capable operator, and she understands the ad business inside and out. That could go a long way to get brands to sign back on the dotted line with Twitter, Paskalis and others said.

Still, other advertising insiders said Yaccarino has her work cut out for her and that her decades in TV don’t necessarily translate to digital realms. “It’s been tried so many times before,” said one digital advertiser, who works for a top creative agency. “Bringing in a TV salesperson to sell digital ad space hasn’t worked in so many cases.” This person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to how Snap brought in Peter Naylor, who was head of Hulu’s ad sales, in 2020. Naylor’s experience in TV did not mean major advertisers clamored to bring all their money to Snap, the agency executive said. (Naylor left Snap to become Netflix's VP of global advertising sales in August 2022.)

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Yaccarino brings plenty of strengths into her new role at Twitter, though. She has led NBCUniversal’s advertising business as chairman of advertising and partnerships group since 2020, and for a decade prior to that, she served in other top ad leadership positions there. Yaccarino is no stranger to digital either, helping with NBCU’s development of its streaming service Peacock, and forging close social media ties to Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Meta.

Musk has overseen an advertising mess since he bought Twitter in October, but Yaccarino has been a consistent voice arguing for the industry to give Musk a chance. And now advertisers say that Yaccarino brings qualities to the role of CEO that counter Musk’s lack of knowledge in the business. At the same time, she has expertise in the main areas that brands care about. Namely, Yaccarino understands brands' concern over safety issues on social media, where marketers want to know that their ads don’t bump up against offensive material. That point has become particularly important since Musk bought Twitter and changed its moderation policies. Yaccarino also understands measurement, applying industry standards that prove to brands that ads were seen and the size of the audience.

“The single greatest thing Musk could do was hire Linda Yaccarino,” Paskalis said, “and now she’s going to have to work her ass off.”

“She needs autonomy,” Paskalis said. “Advertisers are more inclined to respond to her. … When Linda says something advertisers trust it.”

By all indications, Yaccarino is likely well aware of the demands of her new role, and new boss. Musk will now be executive chairman and chief technology officer at Twitter, and also is still its owner. Yaccarino has already been instrumental in keeping Twitter in an open dialog with the ad industry after Musk burned bridges in his first weeks on the job. In April, Yaccarino helped orchestrate Musk’s biggest talk with the industry at Possible, an event in Miami affiliated with the mobile marketing group MMA Global.

In the weeks after Musk took over Twitter, advertisers pulled back on spending, with concerns that he would ignore brand safety considerations and allow trolls to run wild on Twitter. Major agencies, including IPG’s Mediabrands and Omnicom, sent warnings to brands in November that Musk’s leadership represented a safety risk, and they advised caution. Auto brands, including General Motors, stopped spending on Twitter, in part because Musk owns Tesla, a major competitive risk. And other brands just stopped spending, including Mondelēz, Macy’s, McDonald’s and Nike.

However, there has been somewhat of a thaw, and brands started to become more active on Twitter, especially after the Super Bowl. But Musk has been frustrated with the pace of brand deals, according to people close to Twitter’s ad business.

“She has some really big relationships at the top levels of brands,” said another ad industry executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I think she can get a number of them back.”

‘A tremendous track record’

This week, Yaccarino joined forces with Musk at another industry event, ahead of the big CEO announcement. They spoke at WPP’s Stream, according to people who were in attendance. WPP has been perhaps the loudest voice from the agency world calling for brands to get back on Twitter. In February, WPP CEO Mark Read started the Twitter thaw with advertisers, saying: “Twitter seems to be a lot more stable the last few months than perhaps it was toward the end of last year. I think clients want to start to look about how they can come back onto Twitter.”

It's unclear how much Yaccarino has already discussed with agencies and brands about committing to spend dollars on Twitter, but people who know her said those conversations have already started.

Earlier this month, Twitter and NBCU held a joint presentation at Twitter headquarters in New York, during the same week as IAB NewFronts. At the show, Twitter and NBCU talked about closer content deals around events including the Olympics.

“Linda brings to Twitter a tremendous track record of partnership, innovation and results,” said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. “She also has incredibly deep relationships with marketers that she has built over her career. As a platform that looks to generate the majority of their revenue through advertising, she has significant work to do in restoring advertiser trust. Twitter must start acting with a renewed sense of responsibility around brand safety and suitability as opposed to free speech at all costs. They also have an opportunity to broaden their advertising base to mid- and long-tail advertisers in order to diversify their revenue opportunity. The good news is that Linda has experience doing all of these things, and if given the latitude and control, can really turn things around. IAB looks forward to collaborating with Linda closely on this next chapter.”