Meta company has been undergoing project downsizing and layoffs for several months now, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling this year “the year of high efficiency”. Recently, an internal announcement revealed that one of the senior ad product executives, Dan Levy, will be leaving the company in May. Levy, who is currently the Vice President of Business Communications at Meta, made the announcement on Meta’s internal social network. He stated that he wants to focus on his family after losing a child to leukemia, and that he has been considering this decision for the past two years.
Although Levy was replaced last year as head of advertising and business products, the business information project he led has been regarded as having growth potential by Zuckerberg. Levy has been with Meta for 14 years and was previously in charge of Meta’s advertising and commercial products division, which is now known as Monetization. He was replaced last year by John Hegeman, another longtime Levy executive in charge of ad products, and became Levy’s boss in his new role.
Levy’s departure comes at a time when Meta is struggling, having announced a second round of massive layoffs related to a restructuring plan to eliminate lower-priority projects and “flatten” management at the middle level. Michelle Klein, another advertising vice president in sales, also announced her imminent departure this week. Her LinkedIn profile shows that she leads a marketing department of about 1,000 people, leading the company’s rebranding of Meta from Facebook.
Meta spokesperson confirmed Levy’s departure and stated that business communications will remain a strategic focus and area of investment for the company this year. Business messaging is another part of the solution, according to executives, as it could finally monetize the hugely popular WhatsApp. Zuckerberg has said the line of business could be the “next major pillar” of sales growth for the company. Meanwhile, Meta’s Monetization division is responsible for how the company fits into Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy changes, which cut off Meta’s access to valuable user data around which Meta’s targeted advertising business is built, so it is costly. The division has tried to build in-app commerce features to compensate for “signal loss,” while using artificial intelligence technology to improve ad targeting, with mixed success.
