Linda Yaccarino on stage at a content conference in New York in 2016 (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives/D Dipasupil)
Designated Friday as the future boss of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino is a respected personality in the world of media and advertising with a strong personality, considered by some to be a visionary.
To join the blue bird social network, she left NBCUniversal, where she had just spent twelve years and where she was responsible for advertising.
Coming from a family of Italian origin, she has spent her entire career in television, with a first stop of twenty years within the Time Warner group, which has since become Warner Bros Discovery.
“I fell in love with content at a very young age,” she explained, in 2021, in an episode of the “Great Minds” podcast. “I really thought I was going to do television production. (…) I wanted to create the new + Sesame Street +”, a very popular children’s television show in the United States.
As a student at Penn State University (Pennsylvania), she discovered the audiovisual economy and was passionate about the monetization of content, an interest that would structure her professional career.
At NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of cable operator Comcast, she overhauled the advertising strategy to support the shift of video from traditional television to streaming.
Linda Yaccarino notably unified all of the group’s channels and channels on a single platform to facilitate and rationalize advertisers’ advertising expenditure.
It also focused on audience measurement and advertising effectiveness, to enable brands to more effectively assess the impact of their campaigns.
This senior executive comes to Twitter with a rich experience that combines the vision of advertisers with that of the media and broadcasters.
A few weeks ago, she did not hesitate to give some advice to Elon Musk when she interviewed him in front of an audience of advertisers, as part of the “Possible” marketing conference, in Miami, in mid-April. .
Advertisers “need to feel that the opportunity exists for them to influence what you are building,” she told the billionaire.
The goal, she suggested, is “to make Twitter a place where they’ll be excited to spend more money (on advertising),” emphasizing “product development, security and moderation of content”, a subject that has worried advertisers since the takeover by Elon Musk.
During the interview in Miami, his assertive personality, his sharp interventions and his vision visibly seduced the boss of Tesla.
Linda Yaccarino also brings to Elon Musk her vast networks, in advertising and the media but also beyond. She is thus involved in the World Economic Forum in Davos and was, for a time, part of the presidential council on sport, exercise and nutrition, attached to the White House.
© 2023 AFP
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