Yahoo has laid off 1,000 workers, or about 12% of its remaining staff, in a move aimed at restructuring the company’s advertising technology business unit and reallocating its finances more efficiently.
The layoffs, enacted Thursday, mark the end of Yahoo’s attempts to be a direct competitor to Google and Meta in the digital advertising market, according to a report from Axios, which was the first outlet to publicize the job cuts.
A further 600 employees will be let go in the second half of the year, bringing the total to about 20% of Yahoo’s total staff. The layoffs represent a downsizing of roughly 50% of the company’s ad tech division, Axios reported.
Yahoo detailed the strategic reasoning behind the layoffs in a statement released to TechCrunch, saying that the previous ad tech plan, involving a unified stack of demand-side platform, supply-side platform and native businesses, had simply not panned out.
“Despite many years of effort and investment, this strategy was not profitable and struggled to live up to our high standards across the entire stack,” the company said.
Yahoo told Axios that it plans to shut down its native advertising platform, Gemini, in favor of relying on a new partnership with ad tech giant Taboola to advertise over its own content, and that this would create a substantially larger degree of competition for ad space on Yahoo content.
This isn’t to say that Yahoo is planning to exit the advertising business completely — the company is, as an entity, still profitable, with about $8 billion in revenue, and some of that can be chalked up to the demand-side part of the ad tech unit. The DSP business, which Axios said will be renamed Yahoo Advertising, will actually hire more workers, and the company could make acquisitions to help grow that part of the business.
Yahoo representatives were not immediately available for comment.
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2023-02-11 11:00:03
Post from www.computerworld.com
Yahoo Inc. has announced plans to cut its workforce by up to 20% as it restructures its advertising technology business.
The said cuts are expected to affect a large portion of its global workforce and will be implemented by the end of 2016. The restructuring process is aimed at streamlining the company’s core operations and providing greater focus on the growth of its media, mobile and social businesses.
This layoff drives the company’s latest goal to drive maximum effectiveness and efficiency in its operations, as well as to increase its level of services in the future. The company plans to consolidate its operations while also reconfiguring its organizational structure.
Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer will lead this major restructuring program and join forces with Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman and Chief Operating Officer Henrique de Castro in reducing the headcount cost.
The affected staffers will receive 60 days of paid leave and receive outplacement services, including resume assistance. In addition, Yahoo is providing counseling services from its internal Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and online resources.
The layoff almost concludes its year-old plan of shift from becoming an advertising technology business back to acting as a media company. It is worth noting that employees from other regions are also expected to be affected as Yahoo plans to reduce its global workforce.
The tech giant’s previous layoffs in 2012 reduced the number of employees from 14,100 to just about 11,000. It is still unclear to what extent the current job cuts will reduce its overall number of personnel.
Yahoo’s mission to refocus on its media and mobile businesses as key areas has been evidenced since the start of 2016. This move also reflects its efforts to combat the growing pressure posed by search engine competitors such as Google and Bing.
At this point, Yahoo’s timely restructuring program is expected to enable the company to dramatically reduce its operating expenses, while also providing greater and more integrated services to its customers and shareholders.