Yesterday, Google confirmed that senior VP of ads and commerce Susan Wojcicki will be taking over from Salar Kamangar as the head of YouTube.
Wojcicki was employee number 16 at Google and was one of the driving forces behind Google’s AdSense as well as managing its entire ad and sales business.
Excited to join #YouTube – wonderful team, amazing community & inspiring creators. I look forward to watching a lot more videos during work.
— Susan Wojcicki (@SusanWojcicki) February 5, 2014
For people unhappy with YouTube’s current monetization efforts, having a top ad sales person running the show will be a welcome change. So far, there haven’t been any indications that there will be a big strategy shift. Here’s what Google CEO Larry Page said about the appointment in a statement:
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.
However, with someone as experienced as Wojcicki in growing ad revenues, it would be foolish to think that isn’t a huge part of her goal as she takes over the popular video sharing platform.
As for Kamangar, Re/code reports that he will shift to running early stage projects at Google.
