Ross Levinsohn is an American executive. He is the current CEO of Yahoo and has spent over 20 years working in media, digital advertising and technology sectors.
He was the chairman, president and chief executive officer at Guggenheim Digital Media from 2010 to 2012 when they were acquired by Time Warner’s AOL.
Before that he served as Yahoo’s interim CEO from May until September 2012, having been appointed to this position on May 13 after Scott Thompson was fired due to a resume fraud scandal involving his academic credentials.
Sports Illustrated CEO Levinsohn was born in New York City. He attended Rutgers University where he graduated in 1986 with a degree in film and video production.
He joined AOL as a product manager, where he focused on making AOL easy to use on home computers. In 1989, Levinsohn left AOL and joined the cable television advertising firm, Pixo Inc. (renamed Overture in 2002). When Pixo was acquired by Yahoo in 1997, Levinsohn was promoted to senior vice president of advertising products and services.
After the acquisition of Overture by Yahoo, Levinsohn was promoted to chief revenue officer, overseeing the $100 million advertising business. Levinsohn was awarded two patents for his work. He was a recipient of AOL’s Technology Impact Award in 2000 and the Technology Leadership Award in 2002.
In 2003, the Yahoo board of directors appointed Levinsohn to the position of president of Yahoo. The company’s share price went up over 40% during his tenure. It was under his leadership that the company acquired a stake in Alibaba as well as its forays into photo-sharing site Flickr and social bookmarking site Delicious under Brad Garlinghouse. Levinsohn was also responsible for co-founding Yahoo Music, acquiring Hulu and bringing in Katie Couric as well as David Pogue.
Sports Illustrated CEO Levinsohn was appointed chairman of Yahoo’s Asian operations in 2005 and chairman of Yahoo Japan in 2006. He also served on the board of directors at AOL until 2007. Levinsohn was inducted into the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Hall of Fame in 2009.
In 2010, Levinsohn was appointed CEO and president of Guggenheim Digital Media, a digital media company with interests in sports (Yahoo! Sports, NFL.