A year after moving to the city to become the vice president of Meta’s Global Business group, Nicola Mendelsohn will become the senior most business leader at the company’s New York office.
Marne Levine said Monday that she would step down as chief business officer of Meta, parent company to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, leaving Mendelsohn to assume half of her former responsibilities. Mendelsohn will now oversee these teams, including Global Partnerships and Engineering, and continue her core work in building and maintaining relationships with top marketers and agencies.
Crain’s spoke with Mendelsohn in the weeks before her new role was announced, focusing on how she has meshed a big leadership position with attention to small businesses around the city. Although Meta’s advertising sales are enormous—more than $32 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, thanks to 23% more ad impressions that quarter than the year before—the presence of small companies and creators is still essential to the platforms.
What is the opportunity that a social presence creates for the city’s small businesses?
With a social presence, an entrepreneur can turn an idea into a business just with a mobile phone. Entrepreneurs can find customers, build a brand, fulfill orders and track sales—all from a device. You couldn’t do that a decade ago. You needed capital for a storefront, and an ad agency with a five-figure budget to target customers on TV or to do a sidebar in a newspaper. They are basically now able to use the same tools as large advertisers, not just in New York but all over the world. Social media is really easy to use because most people are using it personally, so it’s not that much of a stretch to set up a business page.
Why has the digitalization of businesses been particularly momentous for women and women of color?
This is a passion of mine. Digital tools are a great equalizer. They help people get started. If you look at the research around the world, women don’t have as much access to capital, so it’s harder to start a business that has a storefront. In the past you needed that storefront. Now we see it the other way around: Businesses typically start online and then can go into stores if they need to.
What are the key trends you see in the content landscape? What do social media users want to see?
Content landscape is changing all the time. Recently we have seen a real shift from photo to video. It allows you to add depth to the storytelling. People want an immersive experience. The second is authenticity. People really care about what businesses stand for, who they are and how they make their products. Social media allows customers and businesses to form a smaller set of close relationships instead of more looser ones. The final area is that we are now in a messaging-first world. People want to engage with brands and directly hear from them. Companies want to chat with customers, showcase products and close sales. Half of small businesses use messaging from social media. The Brooklyn Tea guys use the feedback from messaging to influence what new flavors they make. It’s almost a way to make content creation more of a two-way street, and people like the balance of the two.
Last summer some midsize businesses complained that the cost of digital media had become too expensive for customer acquisition. How do you stay affordable for them?
The investment we have made in artificial intelligence to help advertisers automate more of the creation tools to make better-performing ads … can let people eliminate the manual steps of advertising.
In January the Department of Justice, joined by the New York attorney general, sued Google over its ad practices. What is your perspective on tech and advertising regulation?
We have always called for regulation. We think it’s healthy for everyone to know and understand what the lines are.
With a social presence, an entrepreneur can turn an idea into a business just with a mobile phone. Entrepreneurs can find customers, build a brand, fulfill orders and track sales—all from a device. You couldn’t do that a decade ago. You needed capital for a storefront, and an ad agency with a five-figure budget to target customers on TV or to do a sidebar in a newspaper. They are basically now able to use the same tools as large advertisers, not just in New York but all over the world. Social media is really easy to use because most people are using it personally, so it’s not that much of a stretch to set up a business page.