Yahoo Starts Laying Off 20% of Its Staff
Yahoo has said it is laying off more than 20% of its workforce this year, meaning more than 1,600 people, mainly working in its advertising department, will be let go.
In an interview with Axios(Opens in a new window), Yahoo CEO Jim Lazone said that the layoffs were not a result of financial difficulties in the company as a whole but were due to the lack of profitability in the company’s Yahoo for Business advertising unit.
Lazone added the total number of layoffs would amount to 50% of the advertising unit’s current staff. It is reported that they will all be let go before the end of 2023. Roughly 1,000 positions were shed on 9. Feb, when the layoffs were announced.
In further comments that are unlikely to soothe the ears of employees who are set to lose their jobs, Lazone said that the company layoffs and restructuring would be “tremendously beneficial for the profitability of Yahoo overall” and would allow the tech company to “go on the offense” and invest in parts of Yahoo that are profitable.
In 2021, Yahoo and AOL were acquired by Apollo, a global private equity firm for $5 billion from Verizon, at which point Lazone was hired to run Yahoo.
Yahoo has for years helped digital publishers and companies sell automated ads against their content, but this part of the business has not been profitable for the company.
As part of the restructuring, Yahoo is to shut its native advertising platform Gemini down, and in its place, will work with ad tech company Taboola in a new partnership that will sell see Yahoo sell advertising on its own content, Axios reports.
Advertisers across the world have scaled their budgets back(Opens in a new window) in recent months as high inflation rates and the risk of a recession this year
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