Another exec bites the dust on Twitter's safety team as the head of brand safety reportedly departs

• A.J. Brown, Twitter's head of brand safety and ad quality, has left the company, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Brown's departure follows that of Ella Irwin, who left her role as head of trust and safety Thursday.
• Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, Brown faced an advertiser exodus on the platform.

Twitter's trust and safety team is down another executive — its second one in as many days.

A.J. Brown, the platform's head of brand safety and ad quality, has left the company, The Wall Street Journal reported. His LinkedIn reflects that he is no longer with the company as of June 2023.

He'd been at the company for more than six years, per his LinkedIn, and by the end of his tenure, he was responsible for ensuring that advertisers felt safe placing ads on the platform.

His departure follows that of Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety, who said she'd resigned from the company on Thursday. Her predecessor, Yoel Roth, quit in November, just weeks after Elon Musk took the helm of the company.

It hasn't been a particularly easy eight months for Brown.

When Musk took over last year, advertisers fled the platform, as hate speech proliferated and content moderation seemed to go down the drain.

"At this moment, we cannot confidently state that Twitter is a safe place for brands," one advertising agency said at the time.

In the first 25 days of the Tesla boss' takeover, half of  Twitter's top 100 advertisers ditched the platform. Revenue fell 40% in December 2022 versus the same month in 2021.

Brown had tried to counter the perception that Twitter wasn't brand safe. In January, he posted a blog about Twitter's partnerships with DoubleVerify and IAS, adtech companies that prevent ads from appearing next to objectionable keywords.

While some of those advertisers have returned, the company's ad revenue outlook is still grim.

In April, Insider Intelligence cut its projection for Twitter's 2023 ad revenue to $2.98 billion — down nearly 40% from its October forecast.

In an effort to remedy its advertising troubles, Musk brought Linda Yaccarino on as CEO last month. The former head of global advertising at NBCUniversal is well respected in the advertising world, with long-standing relationships and experience running a $13 billion ad business.

Still, it will be hard for her to right the ship without a crew.

Twitter and Brown did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.