Google’s well-known advertising leader Jerry Dischler is stepping down from his role, following a controversial appearance at the antitrust trial targeting its search empire.
Vice President of Advertising Products at Google, Jerry Dischler, is moving on to new challenges after surviving in the role since 2020. He will be succeeded by Vidhya Srinivasan, who joined Google in 2019 and has an extensive background working at Amazon and IBM.
“After more than 15 years on Google’s ads business, Jerry Dischler decided to take on a new challenge,” said Google Senior VP Prabhakar Raghavan. “Our ads business helps millions of businesses thrive and we’re grateful to Jerry for his many accomplishments in this area.”
“With a track record of significant innovations across privacy, measurement, AI, search ads and beyond, Vidhya is the natural successor for this role,” Raghavan said.
In bombshell admissions made during the antitrust trial, Dischler revealed that Google had silently raised ad prices within its search results in order to reach revenue goals. Dischler admitted, “We tend not to tell advertisers about pricing changes.”
Dischler also confirmed the accuracy of previous sworn testimony from 2020 in which he told federal investigators that the price changes resulted in hikes from 5% to 10% for advertisers on certain search queries. He added that raising prices any higher could lead advertisers to turn to rivals like TikTok or Meta.
Jerry Dischler’s situation is possibly tied to a past e-mail in 2019, where he expressed concern about Google missing its quarterly revenue targets and discussed efforts to avoid hurting its stock price.
A Google spokesperson said that the move was Dischler’s decision and was not related to the antitrust trial, without confirming if Dischler was moving to a new role within Google or leaving the company entirely.
According to the spokesperson, Srinivasan’s experience working on Google’s monetization strategy and recent work on generative AI features makes her well-positioned to lead Google’s ad business into the future. This included playing a key role in the recent launch of “Performance Max,” described as a highly touted AI tool that helps determine where ads should run across the company’s websites. According to Google, the tool will boost the performance of ad campaigns according to client objectives.
The antitrust trial against Google concluded earlier this month. The ruling on whether Google violated antitrust law is expected by mid-2024.
Vidhya Srinivasan will succeed Dischler as head of Google’s ad business. » …
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