Facebook loses two more of its executives

Head of video ad unit is departing, causing speculation of implementation trouble

Since its IPO, Facebook has been shedding executives left and right. And today it lost two more.

Justin Shaffer, one of Facebook's product managers, and Ashley Zandy,  a manager on its corporate communications team, are both departing, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Shaffer's departure is particularly noteworthy because he was heading one of the company's most important upcoming projects: its video ad product.

Video advertisements are notoriously hard to get right; they have to be as organic as possible and they have to not be intrusive. Video ads can easily go wrong and turn anger a userbase very quickly.

Facebook has been talking about debuting video ads since the end of last year, and it was recently reported that the company was set to debut them by the end of this year. But the project was recently delayed. Now, with Shaffer leaving, it could be a sign that Facebook is running into some major problems successfully implementing its video ad units.

Despite any potential problems, Shaffer is reportedlty leaving Facebook on good terms, though, and he is not yet disclosing what his next move will be. His last day will be next Wednesday.

Zandy's plans, on the other hand, are well known: she is leaving to be the associate director of international corporate affairs for Alibaba. She will be heading all corporate and financial communications outside of the company's headquarters in China. 

Shaffer and Zandy are hardly the first executives to depart Facebook following its IPO a year and half ago.

Following its debut in May, Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor announced in June that he would be leaving Facebook to start his own company with Google engineer Kevin Gibbs.

In August 1st, three members of the Facebook team all announced on their Facebook walls that they would be leaving: Ethan Beard, director of platform partnerships; platform marketing director Katie Mitic; and mobile platform marketing manager Jonathan Matus.

Then, in October, Joe Lockhart, vice president of global communications at Facebook, left as well. And, in May, Facebook announced that its general counsel Ted Ullyot was leaving.

Most recently, Facebook lost Tom Arrix, Facebook’s head of North American sales and Gokul Rajaram, Facebook's Product Director of Ads, who left to become Square's Product Engineering Lead.

These types of executive departures are exactly what Twitter is trying to avoid by giving out stock grants to its best employees.

Facebook could not be reached for further comment. 

(Image source: https://www.mikeymic.com)