- Meta’s revenue is having a resurgence.
- The artificial intelligence powering its ads business have brought advertisers back.
- Insider identified Meta’s 20 top ad execs tasked with reviving its most crucial revenue stream.
This article was last published in March and has since been updated with new information.
Meta’s ad revenue is bouncing back, as the social media giant just posted 11% year-over-year revenue growth to $32 billion, its first double-digit growth since 2021.
This resurgence is happening just as Meta is fielding a massively overhauled advertising leadership team, after the departures of many longtime leaders, like Marne Levine, Nada Stirratt, Michelle Klein, and Patrick Harris.
The ads division is led by Nicola Mendelsohn, head of global business group, and Justin Osofsky, head of online sales, operations and partnerships. Both report to Meta COO Javier Olivan.
Many of the new executives were quietly promoted after more than a decade of service, though a few, like Clover CMO Andrea Gellert who will start at Meta in August, come from other companies.
These execs are helping Meta’s ad business stabilize after a year of turmoil and quarterly declines.
The artificial intelligence-powered measurement and targeting tools Meta built have started to bring advertisers back, who had throttled spend following Apple’s privacy update. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s second quarter earnings call that nearly all of Meta’s advertisers are using at least one of the company’s AI tools.
The short-form video format Reels has hit a $10 billion annual revenue rate, Zuckerberg said, compared to $3 billion last October.
Finally, Meta’s recently launched text-based app Threads is expected to explore ads once it hits one billion users, Zuckerberg has previously said. During the earnings call, Zuckerberg said he was pleased with its progress so far: “This is as good a start we can hope for.”
However, it remains to be seen whether Meta’s ads business can sustain the momentum it’s shown in recent quarters. After multiple rounds of layoffs this year, Zuckerberg said during the earnings call that Meta has gotten through the major cuts, and the rest of the year will be about “creating stability for our employees.”
Here are the 2o most powerful and important advertising execs at the company, listed alphabetically. Their roles span ad sales, strategy, marketing and product across Meta’s portfolio.
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