Google senior vice president of advertising and commerce Susan Wojcicki has been appointed as the new CEO of YouTube.
The shuffle of top executives comes as the company plans to explore means to generate more money from its video service. Wojcicki replaces Salar Kamangar as top executive of YouTube. Kamangar, the ninth hire of the search engine firm, is expected to take a new role to guide early-stage initiatives of Google.
Re/code reported that the latest executive shuffle will also allow Wojcicki to run her own team instead of splitting responsibilities with another senior team member Sridhar Ramaswamy.
"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," Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page said in a statement.
Likewise, Wojcicki, Google's employee number 16, and the one who championed the acquisition of YouTube, confirmed her new role through Twitter.
"Excited to join #YouTube - wonderful team, amazing community & inspiring creators. I look forward to watching a lot more videos during work," she said in a tweet. Page and co-founder Serge Brin initially operated Google at the garage of Wojcicki's home.
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
Ramaswamy, who joined the company in 2003, will take charge of the ads and commerce unit of Google as Wojcicki takes a bigger role.
YouTube, acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, has been criticized by some programming partners for its low revenue sharing numbers. These video makers entered into an agreement with YouTube, which takes about a 45 percent cut of the ad revenues. There are also new opportunities to explore as well for the video website as consumption of videos have been evolving with the boom of mobile devices. Plus, Chromecast's success is also opening new door for distribution and advertisements.
Analysis of eMarketer estimates the gross ad earnings of YouTube at $5.6 billion for 2013. After paying all what needs to be paid, the video service took home net revenues to the tune of $1.96 billion. The company estimated YouTube's gross ad earnings at $2 billion in 2011 and $3.7 billion in 2012.
"...much of YouTube's growth has come from growing consumer demand to view video content across devices, combined with Google's continuing efforts to accommodate advertisers' desire to reach the multiscreen audience through features such as Paid Channels and TrueView," reported eMarketer.
Wojcicki's new appointment comes close on the heels of reports that she was being courted by a venture capital firm where she would have played a significant role.
