CEO of YouTube. Sounds like a pretty cool job. Its newest holder will be Susan Wojcicki, Google's senior vice president of advertising and commerce, cnet reported. She'll take over for Salar Kamangar, who's moved on to a new role within the company to work on his own projects.
Wojcicki (sister of Anne Wojcicki, who's married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin) knew it was "cool" before most. Back in 2006, when she headed "Google Video," she urged her company to buy a YouTube, which was outpacing her own department and whose founders were asking $1.65 billion, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Though considered a risk at the time, it's easily become one of the tech company's most successful and important acquisitions. The web video service generated $5.6 billion in 2013, $1.9 billion of which returned to Google in profits.
Most exciting about YouTube -- and most frustrating to Google -- is its potential to become an even greater money-maker. It may consume 21 percent of all video advertising revenue in the United States and be the most used video-site in the world, but video ad prices are supposedly dropping and quality, more refined videos such as Google has been attempting to make (in order to capitalize on its usage rate) are proving more expensive than perhaps they are worth, according to the New York Times.
It will be up to Wojcicki, her experience in advertising, and her clear affinity for the service to maximize the site's potential.
"YouTube is a powerful asset for Google," Colin Gillis of BGC Partners told the San Jose Mercury News. "They would like YouTube to be a primary content source, ultimately. Let's see if Susan can help drive that. She's got a long history with the company and is well-regarded. The pieces are now in place. It's time to monetize the asset at a more rapid rate."
Martin Pyykkonen of Wedge Partners affirmed that point and took it a step further.
"Putting her in this role is saying, 'YouTube is coming to fruition,'" he told the Mercury News.
In his statement, CEO Larry Page briefly mentioned Wojckicki's ambitious, innovative nature,but mostly concentrated on praising YouTube as an asset, both for the company and the world.
"Salar and the whole YouTube team have built something amazing. YouTube is a billion person global community curating videos for every possibility. Anyone uploading their creative content can reach the whole world and even make money. Like Salar, Susan has a healthy disregard for the impossible and is excited about improving YouTube in ways that people will love."
