New Delhi: Several businesses including Amazon and Google have laid off thousands of employees this year. Yahoo is the next in this long chain. As part of a significant restructuring of its ad tech division, Yahoo said Thursday it has opted to lay off more than 20 percent of its total workforce, in a move that has joined other Internet titans. By the end of the year, this round of layoffs will affect about half of the ad tech workforce, including about 1,000 laid off this week, the business said.
According to Yahoo, the decision will allow the company to focus its efforts and financial resources on its demand-side platform, or DSP, which is its primary advertising business. Apollo Global Management, a private equity group, acquired the business in 2021 after buying Yahoo for $5 billion. ,ALSO READ: Dell to cut around 6,650 jobs in latest tech job cuts,
According to Reuters, the company’s round of layoffs comes at a time when many advertisers are slashing their marketing budgets as a result of record-high inflation rates and recession worries. ,ALSO READ: UP rolls out red carpet for Global Investors Summit 2023,
The news was initially reported by Axios, which predicted that the layoffs would change Yahoo’s long-standing strategy of directly challenging Google and Meta for supremacy in digital advertising. Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzon claimed that the layoffs were due to a change in strategy rather than financial difficulties.
The report quoted Lanzon as saying that these layoffs would be “very beneficial to Yahoo’s overall profitability.” This will enable the organization to invest more and more in other lucrative business ventures.
It said 14 percent of the company’s projected employment cuts would be made in this phase, with the remaining 8 percent or more in the second half of the year. Although Lanzon did not provide an exact number of people who would be affected, he said that more than 50% of the current employees in the ad technology section would be affected.