AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT YAHOO! (03/24/24)

MARCH 24, 2024 — 1,600+ LAYOFFS

The company has announced plans to lay off more than 20% of its total workforce as part of a major restructuring of its advertising technology unit. The reduction in force will impact more than 50% of Yahoo's advertising technology employees — more than 1,600 people.

According to a company spokesperson, “These decisions are never easy, but we believe these changes will simplify and strengthen our advertising business for the long run while enabling Yahoo to deliver better value to our customers and partners.

Yahoo’s previous strategy in the ads business was to offer a “unified stack” consisting of a demand-side platform (DSP), supply-side platform (SSP), and native advertising platforms. However, “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,” and as such, it will shut down the SSP side of the business.

CEO Jim Lanzone noted that the sunsetting of an older business model would be “tremendously beneficial for the profitability of Yahoo overall.”

FEBRUARY 24, 2023 — Original post…

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo!, the iconic web services provider, has announced a major reduction in force.

The job action will impact 1600 employees or 20% of the workforce.

Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone noted, "that these layoffs are not a result of economic issues, but rather, they are intentional changes to strengthen the unprofitable Yahoo for Business advertising unit."

“These changes announced today are entirely within the context of creating a better business plan for that division going forward. The company has taken many bites of the apple here in trying to make it work over the years, but as a standalone company, we had to take a very honest view of how we apply our resources. The company is “very profitable. We would’ve made these changes even at the peak of the market.”

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?

AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT IMPACT.COM

Santa Barbara, California-based impact.com, an online platform provider of collaborative services to the marketing industry, has announced a 10% reduction in its workforce.

The decision was driven by declining market conditions as marketing budgets are pared back to meet recession-driven market shifts.

David A. Yovanno, CEO, and Per Pettersen, Co-Founder of impact.com, commented,

“It is with sad hearts that we inform you that we’ve had to make organizational changes and reduce the staffing level of the company. We developed a very ambitious plan for impact.com at the start of this year based on both our vision for the business as well as what the market was rewarding at the time".

“Halfway through our fiscal year now, it is very clear that macroeconomic conditions have changed in a once-in-a-generation way; therefore, we must change how we are operating the business going forward if we are to fully realize our vision of becoming the global standard platform for partnerships."

We took multiple measures first — from significantly slowing hiring, reducing discretionary and overhead expenses, and limiting travel, along with a 15% pay cut for executive leadership — however, all of these reductions were not able to fully counterbalance the worsening market conditions. We do not take the idea of layoffs lightly; however, unfortunately, we could no longer avoid it. As we’ve all seen, what impact.com is experiencing is not unique. These conditions will affect or are affecting, every e-commerce business and the ecosystem that surrounds it, as many news outlets have already reported."

"impact.com will weather this storm and come out on the other side by focusing on our clients and core business priorities. To those leaving us this week, we want to say thank you and we appreciate your contributions toward making impact.com what it is today. Thank you for making impact.com a special place that has that ‘thing;’ a company that we are proud to be part of every single day. Our story is extraordinary because all of our employees, past and present, have contributed to it."

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?

AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT HUGE

Brooklyn, New York-based Huge, a full-service digital advertising, marketing, and design company, has announced the layoff of 3% of its workforce to meet market challenges.

'Huge is laying off about 3% of the agency which has about 1,200 employees. Layoffs were distributed equitably across the agency, with the exception being the Brooks Running team which was disproportionately impacted. We looked at representation across our diversity and inclusion targets. We looked at the blend of senior vs. junior roles to ensure that the actions were as equitable as they could possibly be.

Huge's Global CEO Mat Baxter, noted, "We’re seeing clients either cancel, move or pause activities. We’ve had a significant revenue drop over the second half with clients doing exactly that.

It’s a really simple equation, right? We have more people than we need for the revenue that we’ve currently got. I mean, it’s as simple as that. We have an oversupply of people relative to the work that’s coming into the business. So for us, this was a recalibration of people versus forward revenue.

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?