Neal Mohan, a long-serving executive at Google and YouTube, has been appointed as the new CEO of YouTube. As an Indian-American executive, Mohan has joined the ranks of other notable IT executives born in India, such as Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Arvind Krishna of IBM, and Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. He is an Indian-American entrepreneur born and raised in Silicon Valley, California. He completed his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Later on, he finished his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Mohan started his career in 1996 with Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting), then worked at a startup called NetGravity. After then, in 1992, DoubleClick, a provider of online advertising, bought NetGravity. He returned to DoubleClick in April 2007 after completing a two-year MBA programme from 2003 to 2005 and briefly working at Microsoft. At this time, he had a vital role in the company’s acquisition by Google for $3.1 billion.
He worked at Google between 2008 and 2015, overseeing the company’s display and video advertising divisions. In this capacity, he led the creation of advertising products for numerous Google divisions, including the ad tech products DoubleClick, AdSense, AdMob, YouTube, and Google Display Network. Mohan had a crucial role in developing advertising strategies that fueled the expansion of the online media sector, the consumer internet, and the mobile app ecosystem throughout his career.
Mohan has received praise for his contributions to the technology sector. He has been named on several lists, including Adweek’s “50 Indispensable CEOs and CMOs of 2021” and Business Insider’s “Top 100 People Transforming Business.”
The journey to becoming the CEO of YouTube
Susan Wojcicki chose Mohan to be her deputy when she took over as CEO of YouTube in 2014 because of his crucial contribution to the growth of Google’s online advertising business. He has served as YouTube’s Chief Product Officer since 2015. Mohan joined the YouTube team when the platform faced significant competition from other video-sharing platforms, necessitating boosting user engagement and revenue. Mohan started working on this challenge immediately and produced several important ideas that helped advance YouTube to its current status as the dominant player in the industry.
As a YouTube executive, he oversaw the launch of well-liked features and products, including YouTube Music, TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Shorts. Also, he has worked to improve YouTube’s recommendation algorithms, which currently make up most viewing on the site. He has assisted producers in generating additional revenue streams with projects like Super Chat, Super Stickers, and channel memberships. Additionally, by improving ad targeting and providing content creators with more data, he has enabled them to maximize the value of their content. Mohan’s success at Google and his passion for the YouTube platform made him a natural choice for the CEO position.
