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Google's advertising chief Susan Wojcicki to lead YouTube

UPDATED: Once dubbed "the most powerful woman in advertising," Wojcicki has been chief of Google's advertising cash cow since 1998.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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Google is moving around one of its top executives over to take over the reins of arguably one of the Internet giant's biggest properties: YouTube.

Susan Wojcicki, head of advertising for the search giant and one of the company's first employees, has reportedly been tapped to lead the streaming video unit, as first reported by Re/code.

As senior vice president of YouTube and Video, Salar Kamangar has been leading the unit up until now. He is expected to stay on with YouTube, leading other unspecified projects.

Once dubbed "the most powerful woman in advertising" by Forbes, Wojcicki has served as vice president of advertising and commerce for the Mountain View, Calif.-headquartered corporation since 1998.

The Google Ads portfolio is made up of products such as AdWords, Google Analytics, and DoubleClick.

With her experience leading display and search ads as well as master's degrees in economics from both the University of California Santa Cruz and UCLA, it is likely that Google will want to tap Wojcicki's expertise for better monetizing content on YouTube.

Wojcicki herself confirmed the move, so to speak, via Twitter on Wednesday:

ZDNet has reached out to Google for further comment, and we will update this story once we hear back.

UPDATE: Google has confirmed the YouTube leadership shuffle with the following response, attributed to CEO Larry Page:

Salar and the whole YouTube team have built something amazing. YouTube is a billion person global community curating videos for every possibility. Anyone uploading their creative content can reach the whole world and even make money. Like Salar, Susan has a healthy disregard for the impossible and is excited about improving YouTube in ways that people will love.

Image via Google+/Susan Wojcicki

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