Linda Yaccarino is will have to change tone. As a longtime executive overseeing ad sales at global television giant NBCUniversal, he’s spent years battling social media companies over the billions of dollars advertisers split each year between old and new media.
The new CEO of Twitter once publicly joked that families don’t gather around a news feed like they do around a big screen for Super Bowls and primetime shows. She punished services like Facebook to “evaluate their own homework,” forcing ad buyers to trust a platform’s data on ad views instead of being able to go to independent reviewers like those available for TV. AND he underlined how internet companies have sometimes struggled to match the high-quality content produced by television networks.
On Twitter, Yaccarino will need to turn his knowledge of social media weaknesses into an asset and begin competing with the traditional media industry he has championed long before online social networks existed. Elon Musk announced on Friday that Yaccarino will oversee business operations while focusing on Twitter’s technology and design as executive chairman and CTO.
Together, Yaccarino and Musk will try to stop the leak of users and advertisers of the last few months and begin to formulate his vision of transforming Twitter into an “everything app”, with digital payment tools and other features that Musk has yet to clearly articulate. All of which will make Yaccarino’s to-do list bigger than he’s ever had on TV, and he has to do it in a company still reeling from Musk’s sometimes chaotic makeover and his firing of most of his employees. employees. Here are five tasks waiting for you.
Be good to advertisers
Yaccarino’s knack for getting advertisers to open their checkbooks landed her a major role at NBC. He persuaded them continue spending on TV commercials even as consumers spend more time on online services and try new streaming options, like NBC’s Peacock.
The challenge on Twitter is different. Most advertisers want to avoid association with objectionable content, but Musk has embraced the controversy, taking down the teams that moderate content and monitor potential racial and political bias in Twitter’s recommender systems. He also eased rules to combat hate speech against transgender users, censored journalists and critics, and welcomed users his predecessors banned for breaking Twitter content rules, including the former president of the United States Donald Trump.
Many advertisers have quit Twitter over concerns that Musk will increase the chances of their brand messages appearing alongside content that might be offensive. Twitter is expected to sell about $3 billion in advertising this year, according to Inside Intelligence, which prior to Musk’s arrival had projected a haul of $4.7 billion for the year. At NBCUniversal, Yaccarino warned advertisers about the poor quality of social media content; he now he will have to explain that concerns about dirt on Twitter are exaggerated.
Take back corporations and celebrities
With ad revenue declining, Musk has pursued other avenues to boost sales. He pushed Twitter Blue, a paid tier that provides features like the ability to post longer tweets, better security, and a blue checkmark as a supposed identity verification badge. Musk also raised fees for access to the Twitter API, technology that allows software, including bots, to automatically tweet or pull data from the service.
Along the way, there was a lot of confusion. Well-known figures such as basketball star LeBron James have been given check marks despite claiming they have not subscribed. Media outlets like NPR have been wrongly labeled on Twitter as “state-sponsored,” and researchers have been barred from accessing tweet downloads to study toxic behavior.
