YouTube pulls in $15 billion in advertising. Here are the top 9 execs driving its business.
- YouTube made $15 billion from advertising last year, showing its growing ambition to rival TV networks and bring in bigger ad budgets from big TV advertisers.
- Business Insider recently identified 33 insiders steering YouTube, including nine advertising execs.
- Their roles span product, ad sales, and marketing and show where YouTube is making big bets, such as TV-like advertising and subscription services like pay-TV service YouTube TV.
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The tech giant recently revealed that YouTube made $15 billion from advertising in 2019, more than the biggest TV networks NBCUniversal, ABC, and Fox combined. And in the first quarter of 2020, YouTube made $4.04 billion, a 33% year-over-year increase.
YouTube has long had big ambitions to chip away at TV budgets and is taking aim at the $70 billion industry with ad formats and features that help marketers target and measure ads.
The video giant's pitch for TV dollars has taken a hit as brand marketers pulled ad spending due to the pandemic, Google parent Alphabet reported in its first-quarter earnings. Direct-response campaigns have been better protected, the company said.
Business Insider recently highlighted 33 executives leading YouTube across policy, engineering, content, and advertising. Here are the nine who specifically oversee advertising and marketing.
SEE ALSO: Facebook and Google got hit hard by the coronavirus, but their massive ad businesses will come out stronger in the end
Cenk Bulbul, director of YouTube ads marketing
Cenk Bulbol oversees YouTube's relationships with agencies — which is growing in importance in getting large advertisers to invest in the platform. His work includes helping both creative and media agencies to make and buy ads and explains trends on the platform to agencies.
Before joining YouTube in 2012, he worked at Ogilvy New York, Telecom Italia Mobile, and McKinsey.
Jerry Dischler, head of advertising
Jerry Dischler was tapped as Google's advertising boss in June, replacing a role that was previously held by Prabhakar Raghavan.
Dischler has risen internally within Google. He previously led product and engineering teams for Google's ad business across YouTube, search, Maps and its other owned properties.
He is a key advertising exec who was picked to spearhead Google's reorganization last fall that broke its advertising business into two parts: A buy-side arm that helps advertisers buy ads and a sell-side arm that helps publishers sell ads. For YouTube, he worked on a machine-learning tool that advertisers use to target ads.
Dischler has worked at Google since 2005 and previously worked on Google's commerce business before moving to the advertising side.
Cheryl Gresham, global head of integrated media
Cheryl Gresham is one of YouTube's top marketers that creates ad campaigns geared at getting people to watch its content.
YouTube has been putting a lot of marketing muscle behind its subscription-based products like YouTube TV and YouTube Music and Greshman specifically focuses on campaigns that promote entertainment channels and original content. She also works with YouTube's external agencies that make ad campaigns for YouTube.
Gresham is on CMO Danielle Tiedt's team and previously worked in top advertising and media roles at Mattel, Taco Bell and Interpublic Group's agency Initiative.
Galit Ptalis, partner manager
Galit Ptalis is one of advertisers' day-to-day contacts that helps adtech firms like Pixability, Zefr, and Channel Factory vet and measure ad campaigns.
Marketers have asked YouTube for third parties to verify that their ads run and don't appear next to objectionable content. Ptalis helps match up advertisers with adtech firms that help marketers do so.
She joined YouTube four years ago and previously worked in sales roles at adtech firm Turn and the Village Voice.
Vishal Sharma, VP of product management, YouTube ads
Vishal Sharma is one of YouTube's top product executives who are key to its advertising business.
He is a longtime Google veteran who left for a few years to work at Microsoft and now works on YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan's team. He has worked on ad products that use machine learning for targeting and helped shepherd in ad budgets for direct-response campaigns that are now helping YouTube maintain ad revenue as advertisers pull brand advertising during the coronavirus.
Adam Stewart, VP of sales for Google and YouTube
Adam Stewart is one of YouTube's earliest advertising hires under Google's ownership.
He works with large consumer-goods, entertainment, and government clients across all of Google's ad platforms, helping advertisers set their strategies for YouTube and elsewhere within Google's ad platform.
Stewart comes from a sales background at Discovery Communications for properties like BBC America and Discovery Channel and helped YouTube sign some of its first big advertising deals with entertainment brands like Lionsgate.
Danielle Tiedt, VP of marketing
Danielle Tiedt is YouTube's top marketing exec responsible for getting people to understand and use its properties through advertising.
She is behind several of YouTube's more notable campaigns over the past few years, including a campaign that promoted YouTube's ties with creators like Lilly Singh and Tyler Oakley on billboards and TV ads. Tiedt has also worked on ad campaigns for product launches like YouTube Music and YouTube Kids.
Before joining YouTube in 2012, she was general manager of Microsoft's marketing business.
Tara Walpert Levy, VP of agency solutions
Tara Walpert Levy spearheads YouTube's relationships with big advertising agencies and works with advertisers to create negotiated ad packages that rival TV networks' annual upfront deals.
Walpert Levy also oversees relationships with third parties that YouTube allows to measure and vet ad campaigns. She joined YouTube in 2011 and comes from a TV and media background. She previously was the president of TV targeting firm Visible World, which is now owned by Comcast, and worked at McKinsey.
Debbie Weinstein, VP of global video solutions
Debbie Weinstein helps roll out ad products for YouTube that mimic TV advertising.
Her role is a hybrid of YouTube's product and sales teams and is particularly focused on OTT, which is increasingly becoming how people watch YouTube videos.
Examples of ad products that her team has rolled out includes technology that sequences ads together so that consumers see a series of different messages, and the masthead ad for YouTube's TV app.
Weinstein joined YouTube in 2014 and previously held advertising and sales roles at Unilever and Viacom.
* This article was originally published here
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