Linda Yaccarino is a standout in the marketing field. As an influential leader, she has established relationships with many top advertisers and agencies.
She has led the industry to move away from Nielsen ratings and accept new metrics, while being instrumental in the introduction of Peacock, NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service.
She’s a marketer’s leader
Yaccarino built an advertising business that catered to audiences across platforms for NBCUniversal as its Head of Marketing. She successfully diversified revenue streams by forging relationships with non-traditional media companies and pushing the industry to adopt new metrics to measure digital viewing, as well as spearheading Peacock, Comcast NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service.
Successful as a leader, she is widely revered in television. A strong advocate for her industry, she has often called out Nielsen’s over-reliance on ratings while pushing for new methods of measuring viewership.
Experience has served her well at Twitter, where she will be charged with improving psychological safety and increasing engagement. With high scores on agentic traits and interpersonal communal ones, she should lead an effective team. Bold decision-making may be needed in order to reach these goals; but trust will need to be built simultaneously.
She’s a student of consumer behavior
linda yaccarino wiki graduated from Penn State University and has dedicated her career to media. A proven leader, she has fortified existing relationships while helping stagnant ad systems evolve at NBCUniversal over the past decade. Furthermore, she was instrumental in convincing NBCUniversal to invest in Peacock, their ad-supported streaming platform; and spearheading efforts for more diverse measurement methods since Nielsen lost accreditation.
At Twitter, she is responsible for overseeing global and national advertising sales and partnerships, ad sales marketing initiatives and strategic initiatives across its industry-leading portfolio of linear networks, digital platforms, distribution partnerships and client relationships. A true student of consumer behavior with proven skills in connecting established and emerging brands across industries to hundreds of millions of viewers, she uses an approach which balances assertive and decisive traits with interpersonal communal ones that help foster a positive working culture – potentially helping improve psychological safety as she leads forward with Twitter.
She’s a leader with empathy
As soon as a new leader takes charge, their top priority should be building trust and credibility with existing clients. According to those close to Yaccarino, she has proven adept at this task – being trustworthy yet empathic while listening attentively to brand and agency partners’ concerns, they report.
At NBCUniversal, Yaccarino transformed their advertising and partnership business for the 21st century. She spearheaded the launch of their ad-supported streaming service Peacock in 2020 while sparking debates regarding improved audience measurement data to adapt with shifting audience tastes online.
She chairs a task force on the future of work at the World Economic Forum, which Elon Musk has harshly criticized as being “boring”. At an advertising conference last month, she interviewed Musk regarding advertisers’ concerns with Twitter content and attempted to persuade him to limit his own tweeting activity. As Twitter’s new CEO, she’ll likely address many controversies as she works towards reeling back advertisers.
She’s a global leader
Before leaving NBCUniversal in 2022, this New York native and longtime Madison Avenue power player played an instrumental role in revitalizing the media giant’s advertising sales business. She helped NBCUniversal launch Peacock – its ad-supported streaming platform – push for innovative ways of measuring advertising performance as well as forging partnerships with YouTube, Buzzfeed and Snapchat among many others. She chaired World Economic Forum Taskforce on Future Work as well as WEF media entertainment culture industry governors steering committee.
Ad agency executives report that Yaccarino has already made an impressionful debut as CMO at Twitter, according to agency executives. They noted she was actively reaching out to advertisers while seeking to repair trust deficits created by Elon Musk’s controversial moves, including changes in content moderation policies. Her connection to a coronavirus vaccine campaign, however, has caused some concern that she may return to stricter anti-disinformation regulations seen with Twitter in earlier eras. It remains to be seen what direction her approach will take – one thing is certain though – she speaks CMO fluently while understanding marketers need.