“I’ve decided that it’s time for a new chapter,” Levine posted in a note to Instagram on Monday, a fitting place to convey the news since she was Instagram’s first chief operating officer. Levine talked about how she oversaw advertising and partnerships as chief business officer for nearly two years.
Levine’s departure comes on the heels of Shery Sandberg’s goodbye last year, after 14 years as the No. 2 executive at the company. In 2021, Carolyn Everson, who preceded Mendelsohn atop the global business group, left then-Facebook after a decade at the company. At the time, Everson had been in the running to be the chief business officer, a role that Levine wound up filling. Levine was taking the role, and other duties, that David Fischer had filled as chief revenue officer.
Levine and Sandberg were close associates, and Levine noted that Sandberg recruited her to join Facebook.
Levine leaves as Meta is in the middle of an advertising and technological transition. Meta’s ad revenues have been affected by economic uncertainty, but also by drastic changes to the online ecosystem amid privacy restraints that started to limit marketing data the company relies on to target and measure ads. In the fourth quarter, Meta’s ad revenue dropped 4% year over year to $27.2 billion. During the past two quarters, ad revenue has declined, an unprecedented retrenchment for the company. But there were signs of strength especially as Facebook and WhatsApp both reported crossing 2 billion monthly users.