Elon Musk-owned Twitter has hired another former NBCUniversal executive to a senior role as it looks to recover the ad revenue it has shed since the South African billionaire’s acquisition of the social media platform in late 2022.

Joe Benarroch, who most recently served as Comcast-owned NBCUniversal executive vice president, communications, global advertising and partnerships, has taken an unspecified role in ‘business operations’, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Benarroch’s hire was welcomed by incoming Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino – also an alumn of NBCUniversal as former advertising chief – who tweeted: "Welcome to the flock, @benarroch_joe! From one bird to the next."

Benarroch and Yaccarino are staring down a fairly daunting task at Twitter. Since Musk’s acquisition, the company has taken a significantly more lax approach to content moderation which led to more than half of its top 1,000 advertisers withdrawing their support. The company has also cut its headcount by around 70 per cent, with content moderation teams being gutted.

Compounding Twitter’s growing reputation as not a safe place for brands is the departures of head of brand safety and ad quality A.J. Brown and head of trust and safety Ella Irwin whose resignations were announced last week.

The company’s attempt to move away from advertising as its main revenue source and towards its controversial Twitter Blue subscription has spectacularly backfired for the bird app.

Asset manager Fidelity, which held a $20 million stake in the company prior to its sale to Musk, last week in a corporate filing said that its stake is now worth under $6.6 million. This values the overall company, now officially called X Holdings Corp, at $14.75 billion – a far cry from the $44 billion paid by Musk in October.

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