Meta’s Top Ad Sales Executive Faces Uphill Battle in Post-Sandberg Era

This week, three Meta Platforms executives will head to the Sun Valley conference in Idaho to woo advertisers: Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Business Officer Marne Levine, a key deputy of Sandberg who will be put to the test when the COO leaves the company this fall.

Levine, who previously served in the Clinton administration with Sandberg and later worked as COO of Instagram, has a difficult job. She is overseeing Meta’s ad sales department as the company’s advertising business is squeezed like never before by economic conditions, competition from TikTok and privacy restrictions imposed by Apple that limit Meta’s ability to offer finely tuned targeting capabilities to marketers. Meta is expected to report flat second-quarter revenue later this month, a sharp slowdown from the quarterly growth of the past few years.

Though Levine was involved in the monetization efforts at Instagram and had some crossover with ads in her role as Meta’s head of partnerships, she did not make her career in advertising. And Sandberg, a 14-year company veteran who was credited with helping to build sprawling ad businesses at both Meta and Google, will take with her a host of established relationships in the ad world when she leaves.