YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl is taking his leave after serving over 12 years at the company, Variety initially reported.
Kyncl’s exit was officially announced in an employee memo sent Monday by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. She said Kyncl has decided to leave YouTube in 2023 to “start the next chapter in his career.”
“Thanks to Robert and his leadership team, we are meaningfully contributing to the media industry, having paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the last three years,” Wojcicki wrote in the memo, obtained by Variety.
Prior to joining YouTube in 2010, Kyncl was VP of content at Netflix for nearly eight years, helping the streamer oversee content partnerships. He also served briefly as manager for HBO International.
Wojcicki further announced Google executive Mary Ellen Coe will replace Kyncl as CBO, effective October 3. Coe currently holds the position of president at Google’s global customer solutions. One of her key roles is to acquire new advertisers and channel partners for Google Ads.
Coe is only YouTube’s most recent executive addition. Earlier this month, YouTube tapped Verizon exec Miguel Quiroga to manage and develop partnerships for the platform’s suite of apps.
YouTube is beefing up its corporate leadership as reports have surfaced the company plans to launch its own streaming aggregation platform – or a “channel store.”
On the advertising front, YouTube has pointed towards connected TV as a roadmap for driving audience engagement. Google last week expanded CTV ad buying options for advertisers, also allowing ad buyers to leverage Nielsen data when setting up audience guarantees.
To help advertisers better understand YouTube ad engagement, Nielsen last month unveiled a four-screen ad deduplication product, which delineates linear and CTV inventory and reduces redundant audience data.
In other YouTube news, the platform last week added YouTube Shorts – short form video clips similar to those on TikTok – to YouTube TV, along with the option to watch up to four channels simultaneously.
Other media companies are also expanding on short form content to boost engagement. Meta has said Instagram Reels, its version of bite-sized videos, reached $1 billion in annual revenue run rate in the second quarter.