Can X CEO Linda Yaccarino Recover?
Kara Swisher (host), Lou Paskalis (guest), Scott Galloway (host), Kara Swisher (host)
In this episode of Pivot, featuring Kara Swisher and Lou Paskalis, Can X CEO Linda Yaccarino Recover? explores ad Chief Explains Why Linda Yaccarino Can’t Save X’s Ad Business Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway interview ad strategist Lou Paskalis about X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s embattled position and the platform’s collapsing relationship with advertisers. Paskalis, a longtime supporter of both Twitter and Yaccarino, now believes X’s traditional ad model is effectively dead, largely due to Elon Musk’s behavior and explicit hostility to major brands. He argues that while Yaccarino’s personal reputation in advertising remains salvageable, she has little real power at X and is spending her hard-won credibility on a platform advertisers now see as a severe reputational risk. The conversation broadens into where ad dollars are actually flowing, the rise of TikTok and CTV, the problems with programmatic, and why marketers must re-invest in quality news to combat a “war on truth.”
Ad Chief Explains Why Linda Yaccarino Can’t Save X’s Ad Business
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway interview ad strategist Lou Paskalis about X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s embattled position and the platform’s collapsing relationship with advertisers. Paskalis, a longtime supporter of both Twitter and Yaccarino, now believes X’s traditional ad model is effectively dead, largely due to Elon Musk’s behavior and explicit hostility to major brands. He argues that while Yaccarino’s personal reputation in advertising remains salvageable, she has little real power at X and is spending her hard-won credibility on a platform advertisers now see as a severe reputational risk. The conversation broadens into where ad dollars are actually flowing, the rise of TikTok and CTV, the problems with programmatic, and why marketers must re-invest in quality news to combat a “war on truth.”
Key Takeaways
X’s ad business is effectively broken for major brands.
Paskalis says there is no credible scenario where a well-governed Fortune 500 company could justify returning to X given the outsized reputational and political risks tied directly to Elon Musk’s conduct.
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Musk has ‘burned the boats’ on traditional advertising.
By publicly telling advertisers to “go fuck yourself” and singling out Disney’s Bob Iger, Musk signaled he has written off big-brand ad revenue and is likely pursuing some new, non-ad-based revenue model.
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Linda Yaccarino’s power and influence inside X appear severely limited.
Paskalis notes she wasn’t even in the loop on the X rebrand communications, likening her role to “cleaning up the elephant poop,” and argues she was never empowered to meaningfully influence Musk or platform strategy.
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Yaccarino’s industry reputation is damaged but still recoverable.
Despite what Galloway calls a ‘disaster’ for her public image, Paskalis believes the ad community will largely view her X stint as an ill-fated attempt to do the right thing and would still trust her to run major ad businesses elsewhere.
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Ad dollars are moving toward TikTok, CTV, and retail media networks.
Marketers are chasing high-quality engagement and addressable audiences, increasingly pairing retail media’s first-party data with ad-supported CTV platforms, while also investing more heavily (though selectively) in TikTok.
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Programmatic advertising is riddled with waste and low-quality inventory.
New ANA research Paskalis helped with suggests roughly 20% of global programmatic spend goes to bad actors and made-for-advertising sites, driving a ‘flight to quality’ back toward more measurable, trustworthy channels.
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Supporting quality news is both a civic duty and a smart buy.
Paskalis argues that in a ‘war on truth,’ journalists are the primary defenders, and advertising on credible news delivers strong ROAS and unique reach—yet many marketers irrationally shun it while funding junky, low-value sites instead.
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Notable Quotes
“She’s really focused on staying on the mechanical bull as long as possible.”
— Lou Paskalis
“She probably had the best reputation of any sell-side senior executive in the advertising industry… and I think she’s now cashing those chips in for Elon in a way that I don’t think he’s capable of reciprocating.”
— Lou Paskalis
“I wouldn’t know how to begin to sell that platform to any well-governed company.”
— Lou Paskalis
“Coming into this with a clean slate, she strikes me as the worst CEO of the year, hands down.”
— Scott Galloway
“We’re living through an era where there’s a war on truth… and the only people who are defending the truth in the war on truth are journalists.”
— Lou Paskalis
Questions Answered in This Episode
If Elon Musk is abandoning traditional advertising, what realistic revenue models could sustain X at its current scale?
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway interview ad strategist Lou Paskalis about X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s embattled position and the platform’s collapsing relationship with advertisers. ...
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What concrete steps would Linda Yaccarino need to take to rehabilitate her public image outside the ad industry, not just within it?
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How can major brands balance fear of culture-war backlash with the proven effectiveness of advertising on credible news outlets?
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Given the scale of fraud and waste in programmatic, how should CMOs restructure their media mixes over the next 2–3 years?
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What responsibility do marketers bear in the ‘war on truth,’ and how could redirecting budgets from MFAs to quality journalism practically change the information ecosystem?
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Transcript Preview
Lou Paskalis is the chief strategy officer for Ad Fontes, uh, Media. He knows ex-CEO Linda Rakerino quite well, and in recent weeks, was one of the number of ad executives encouraging her to resign, advising her to do so, uh, before her reputation is damaged, he said. He also wrote a really interesting piece about it. Uh, I've known him for a long time. He's been a big mover and shaker in the ad industry. Uh, we've recently talked quite a lot about how advertisers are not buying into news, which I wanna get to at the end. But first, welcome, Lou.
Hey, Kara. It's a thrill to be here with you and Scott. Bucket list event for me.
I know.
Uh, so nice to be working with you.
Oh, good. You're a nice fan. Um, you've always been really nice about Pivot. Um, so let's talk first about Linda. You've known her for a long time. You were close to her. You even were very, at the time she went to Twitter, when I said, "Oh, no, no, this isn't gonna end well," you said, "Oh, come on, Kara, give her a chance. She'll do a good job." Um, uh, when you texted her about resigning, that was before Elon's DealBook interview.
Correct.
Uh, have, have you been in touch since? And obviously you wrote that piece. Um, what, wh- what's the state of play right now? She's sort of all in, it seems.
She is all in, and, uh, I've texted her a number of times without reply, which is, you know, unfortunate because normally we, you know, had a great, you know, exchange very quickly. But I think she's bunkered in. I think she's really focused on staying on the mechanical bull as long as possible.
(laughs)
Um, and, uh, you know, I, I, I think that this is very consistent with her DNA, where quitting equals failing. And unfortunately, that's a sort of short-term outcome in this context, whereas the long-term outcome is she probably has or maybe had the best reputation of any sell-side senior executive in the advertising industry. It was built over a quarter century, always doing the right thing, high integrity. You could rely on her, you know, her word was her bond. And I think she's now cashing those chips in for Elon in a way that I don't think he's capable of reciprocating.
Yeah. So after the interview, she, as you said, she sent a memo to ex-employees saying Musk, quote, "Shared an unmatched and completely unvarnished perspective and vision for the future." This is after he cursed out advertisers. Uh, she also... which was shocking to me. Uh, she also said in the post about X standing at the unique and amazing intersection of free speech and Main Street, which was possibly one of the worst metaphors I've ever heard. Do you actually think she believes this stuff, or is she just determined? What is causing this? I think she believes it now. I think she actually believes it. I... maybe not. I, I, I don't find her to be a particularly cynical person over the time I knew her.
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