• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 10, 2025

Linda Yaccarino always touted NBCUniversal’s “premium” and “quality” content to brand marketers during her long stint running the media companies advertising business.

But that wasn’t the main selling point at X, at chief executive officer -- the much maligned social media platform. It was about free speech. Advertisers didn’t always see it that way.

Premium content on X wasn’t a thing. And that was her long battle. Yaccarino disclosed that she will be departing the company on Wednesday,

On top of all this, she had to deal with the wild card that was Elon Musk, who hired her and who leads the whole operation -- as well as Tesla, SpaceX, and other businesses.

Musk's out-of-the-box comments -- some of which he pulled back on -- rattle advertisers. One major Musk incident happened five months after Yaccarino took over the hot seat in June 2023.

In November of that year, several major Hollywood studios (Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Discovery) and advertisers (Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Microsoft) paused or withdrew their advertising on X (formerly Twitter) following controversial remarks by Elon Musk and subsequent concerns about antisemitism and hate speech on the platform.

In response -- and to make matters worse -- Musk then said advertisers were attempting to “blackmail” him.

“If someone wants to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing me with money? Go fuck yourself,” Musk, owner and chief technology officer of X/Twitter, said at that time during a New York Times' DealBook event.

Musk repeated the blunt statement again, adding: "Is that clear? I hope it is." Later in the conversation, he doubled down on what he just said: “That’s how I feel. Don’t advertise.” He later apologized and said his remarks needed clarification.

All this put Yaccarino on the back foot -- trying to do damage control to reassure advertisers.

Two years later, she had made some gains in bringing back some marketers to the social media platform -- Apple, Unilever, Hulu, and American Express. Emarketer estimates now estimated X to get to $2.26 billion in ad revenue this year -- improving from $1.9 billion in 2024.

The longer-trend look shows another story. Since Musk acquired Twitter (former brand name of X) in 2022 for $44 billion, overall ad spending is still down -- by almost half -- from $4.5 billion in 2021 before Musk took over.

There has been even more distraction -- especially earlier this year with Musk heading up the Trump Administration's DOGE efforts (the Department of Government Efficiency). Analysts said this reflected poorly on X.

And now it looks like more distraction for Musk's companies -- as evidence that Tesla stock has suffered again. He now looks to start a new political party, the America Party -- this in reaction to the Trump Administration’s new massive budget bill.

For herself, Yaccarino seems to have gotten tired of another party: The high-energy, tiring, up-and-down X party scene.