The gradual 20% Yahoo layoff of its workforce proposed to continue till the end of 2023 is still on, this was said to happen with the elimination of more than 1,600 employees in the business. This comes as a surprise to many as Yahoo is still profitable, earning around $8 billion in yearly revenue.
Yahoo’s CEO Believes
According to PitchBook data, Yahoo had about 10,000 employees in September 2021. Many had expected that Yahoo would employ more staff, but then the pandemic came. Though the company survived, it had to cut spending. Remember that Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone had said that the layoffs were not due to economic issues, but rather, they were intentional changes to strengthen the unprofitable Yahoo for Business advertising unit.
layoff at Silicon Valley companies
But truth be told, things are generally tough in Silicon Valley for companies. Elon Musk’s vision for his newly $44 billion purchased social media platform “Twitter” in reducing wasteful spending has also led to another massive job cut, as Twitter also cut about ten percent of its remaining staff. That was down from the 7,500 who worked for the company before Elon Musk bought the company.
Also, there were new rounds of 2023 staff layoffs at Facebook’s Parent Company, Meta. This is as Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for his social media platform, the proposed “year of efficiency”, led to massive job cuts, as the company plans to lay off another 10,000 workers, marking the second round of significant job cuts announced by the tech giant in four months according to the New York Times. That’s down another 11,000 staff who worked for the company.
However, in the United States Jobs Report, the United States economy added 311,000 new jobs in February. This is however not reflecting in. According to Techcrunch, Yahoo employees were notified that 12% of the company (1,000 employees) would be laid off before the end of the day of receiving the email. In six months which is mid this year, they were told that another 8% which is about 600 people will be let go. These cuts will impact around half of Yahoo’s workforce.
Where is the saved Money Going?
CNBC confirmed, that in November, Yahoo took an almost 25% stake in advertising network Taboola, which is now the company’s native advertising partner in a 30-year commercial agreement. Lanzone told Axios that these changes will allow Yahoo to increase competition for ad placements eight times over, but as a result of this transition, Yahoo will shut down native advertising platforms like Gemini and its supply-side platform (SSP). Yahoo will also focus on its demand-side platform (DSP), which will be renamed Yahoo Advertising. This division will focus on deals with Fortune 500 companies.
All About Yahoo Ads Business
It is believed that despite many years of effort, investment, and strategy of making Yahoo ads business compete in the ad tech industry by offering a ‘unified stack’ this strategy was not profitable and struggled to live up to our high standards across the entire stack. This unified stack consists of;
- Supply Side Platform (SSP)
- Yahoo Demand Side Platform (DSP)
- Native platforms
