5 Key Topics From X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s CES Keynote

It’s been a wild ride for Linda Yaccarino since leaving NBCUniversal in June 2023 to become CEO of X, and she discussed where that ride has taken her and where it might be headed during her keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Here are five key topics she touched on in her conversation with former CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge:

1. Welcome Back, Advertisers

Yaccarino repeated past claims that 90% of the advertisers that left X over brand safety concerns have returned to the platform, citing its efforts on the brand safety front, new tools, and uniqueness as a platform.

She mentioned partnerships X has entered with third-party companies specializing in brand safety and suitability, industry certifications it has earned, and the rollout of more robust controls and settings.

Additionally, the CEO noted that since then-Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk in October 2022, more than 250 product innovations have been shipped and rolled out—more than in the 10 previous years at Twitter combined.

2. Trend Genius

The new product she was most proud of is Trend Genius, which allows advertisers to choose topics they wish to be aligned with and then shares pre-crafted creative when those topics go viral.

Yaccarino also mentioned luxury goods company LVMH and two recent instances where Trend Genius came into play.

For example, actor Bradley Cooper is one of LVMH’s brand ambassadors, and Trend Genius was triggered when Cooper was spotted singing along with Travis Kelce at a Taylor Swift concert. And when fellow LVMH influencer Zendaya showed up at the Golden Globe Awards earlier this month sporting the ring from her engagement to fellow actor Tom Holland, the same thing happened.

“Everyone talks about what’s trending on X, right? There’s no surrogate for X,” she said. “When a trend kicks up on X, and it hits a certain, let’s call it altitude, or it’s really on fire on X … advertisers that we have agreements with see their ad campaigns get fired up, and it starts to take advantage of those trends.”

She added, “When the trend starts to cool down, then your campaign pauses, and we move on to the next.”

3. X vs. the legacy media

Musk’s disdain for the legacy media is widely known to anyone who follows him on X, as he continually reminds the platform’s users, “You are the media now.”

Despite that tumultuous relationship, Yaccarino revealed during her keynote that former Wall Street Journal Detroit bureau chief John Stoll joined X to lead its newsgroup and partnership team.

“Legacy media news has become almost like a fan service to make sure that you’re speaking to a niche audience to make your budget right, and what we want to do is make sure that we provide a great place for that journalistic curiosity to return and to make sure that there is a place for journalists to come thrive and earn a great living,” Yaccarino said, referring to the platform’s revenue share program for creators.

4. Sports center

Yaccarino touted the NFL Portal launched by the platform last November, saying that X tallied 36 billion impressions and 4 billion video views for National Football League content in 2024.

“If you’re transforming the company like we are, you want to partner with the best brands,” she said. “And there’s no bigger, stronger brand than the NFL.”

Yaccarino added that the success of the NFL Portal will likely lead to an eventual global sports portal on the platform.

5. Reaction to Meta news

Yaccarino shared her reaction to news earlier this week that Meta will scrap third-party fact-checking in favor of a Community Notes initiative like the one in place on X.

“How cool is that?” she said. “I think it’s really exciting that when you think about Community Notes being good for the world, think about it as this global collective consciousness keeping each other accountable at global scale in real-time. And it couldn’t be more validating than to see that (CEO Mark Zuckerberg) and Meta realized that.”