It looks like one of Google's key advertising minds is taking the reins at YouTube.
According to reports, Susan Wojcicki, one of Google's earliest employees and most recently the company's senior vice president of advertising, will now lead its YouTube online video unit, taking over from another longtime Googler, Salar Kamangar.
Google, it seems, is intent on refocusing YouTube's mission as it continues to battle not only other online video sites, but the traditional movie and TV giants as well. YouTube is one of the primary ways of posting videos to the net, but it's still striving to challenge traditional outlets with more polished programming, and, on the advertising front, it's struggling with some well-documented growing pains.
Wojcicki's appointment is yet another indication that the online video wars are escalating to new heights. The news came on the same day that Time Warner fired a shot across the bow of upstart video player NetFlix.
Famously, one of Google's earliest offices was Wojcicki's garage. She was friends with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. But just prior to her new promotion, Re/code reports, Wojcicki was hoping to spread her wings and could have written her own ticket as a CEO or venture capital partner outside of Google. YouTube, which generated in excess of $5 billion for Google last year, according one estimate, gives her a fairly large kingdom inside the company. But it's also a kingdom that needs her help.
As discussed in a recent New York Times story, dedicated video creators on YouTube are now struggling to cope with falling ad rates on the service, as more and more people and companies embrace the site. The cutthroat side of making and promoting YouTube videos has pushed many towards alternatives, including the founders of Patreon, a site that helps artists make direct appeals to supporters, as opposed to seeking ad dollars on Google's video site.
Google must find a way of satisfying the revenue needs not only of little guys, but the big ones -- i.e. the big movie and TV studies. Wojcicki's job won't be easy.
