• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 12, 2023

NBCUniversal this morning announced that Mark Marshall, president, advertising sales and client partnerships will succeed Linda Yaccarino as interim chairman of its advertising and partnerships group.

The company confirmed Yaccarino's departure, who will depart to be chief executive officer of Twitter. In a tweet, Elon Musk -- who will shift to the executive chairman from the CEO post at Twitter -- said of the new hire: 

“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter! @LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”

For her part, Yaccarino said in a statement:  “It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team."

Marshall will report to NBCUniversal Television and Streaming Chairman Mark Lazarus.

Marshall was named president of advertising sales and partnerships at NBCUniversal in 2018, after serving in a variety of ad-sales roles with the company, and at Turner Broadcasting before that.

This comes as NBCUniversal is preparing its important annual upfront TV advertising in-person event for TV and media advertisers on Monday, which will take place at Radio City Music Hall.

Recently, Marshall was assigned to head up a new combined national sales team under streamlined operations of NBCUniversal's all-encompassing One Platform, its unified cross-media platform selling service.

A statement from Mike Cavanagh, president of Comcast Corp., who is now in charge of running NBCUniversal, said:

“We are grateful for Linda Yaccarino’s leadership of NBCUniversal’s Advertising Sales business, and for the innovative team and platform she has built. Linda has made countless contributions to the company during her 12-year tenure, and we wish her the best.”

Yaccarino now becomes the second major NBCUniversal executive to depart the company in the four weeks. Jeff Shell, chief executive officer of NBCUniversal, abruptly resigned his post following a misconduct investigation in late April.