Meta names new ad sales leader in the US and Americas

Meta has a new ad sales lead for the U.S. and the rest of the Americas, after elevating Alvin Bowles to VP of global business group Americas, a key sales role that had been filled by Nada Stirratt, who left Meta in March.

Bowles, whose appointment was announced today, has been with the company formerly known as Facebook since 2015. Bowles’ new position comes as Meta is reorganizing its entire organization amid high-profile departures and significant layoffs, but the company saw a return to advertising growth last quarter. Bowles has been a visible executive within Meta’s ranks, and most recently presented at Meta’s NewFronts in New York last week. Most recently, Bowles was VP of global partnerships and engineering.

Bowles is now responsible for building and managing Meta’s sales strategy in the Americas, and working with advertisers on strategic initiatives, a Meta spokesperson told Ad Age ahead of the announcement.

“This role is one that resonates deeply with me, and I’m looking forward to leveraging my experience to help our partners execute on innovation and growth,” Bowles said in the announcement. 

Meta’s ad business is in a transition phase as Facebook and Instagram focus on monetizing Reels videos, the short-form style of videos that compete with TikTok’s social media model. Reels are capturing more of users’ time on the apps, but they don’t generate as much revenue as traditional in-feed ads. Meta also is revamping its ad platform to handle the data-sharing changes coming out of Apple and Google. With the death of cookies, and changes to consumer privacy, Facebook and Instagram had to rebuild their ad technology to target and measures ads effectively.

AI is another sea change that Meta is navigating, and the company is putting AI into its ad products. AI can help target ads and manage shopping campaigns that focus on commerce results for marketers. Generative AI will also start to play a bigger role in ad creation. Meta talked about Reels, AI and shopping at its NewFronts show last week.

Meta has reorganized parts of its leadership team in recent months with the exit of Stirratt, and before that Marne Levine, chief business officer. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg led a series of layoffs, too, which reduced more than 20,000 positions since late 2022. 

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Meta’s ad sales had declined year over year in the last three quarters of 2022, then rose in the first quarter of this year, up 3% from a year earlier to $28.65 billion, according to its quarterly report.

In his new role, Bowles will report to Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business group.

“Alvin [Bowles] is respected and trusted within the industry and has a deep understanding of how we want to deliver impact for our clients and partners,” Mendelsohn said in a statement. “He knows what it takes to drive a massive business forward.”