Admitting defeat in the online advertising wars, the former search powerhouse is set to lay off 1,600 employees by the end of 2023. Credit: Yahoo 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. Related content opinion Why you’ll soon have a digital clone of your own AI isn’t going to replace you at work. You will. By Mike Elgan May 02, 2024 7 mins Augmented Reality Generative AI Virtual Reality news analysis Workers with AI skills are getting these pay cash premiums As AI deployments become more critical to digital transformation projects, organizations are struggling to find skilled workers to support the new technology, so they're paying premiums for prospective hires or current employees who obtain the n By Lucas Mearian May 01, 2024 7 mins Generative AI IT Jobs IT Skills news Atlassian Rovo brings AI smarts to enterprise search With Rovo, the company looks to expand existing search capabilities in its products, tapping into documents held in third-party apps and using generative AI to provide a natural language interface. By Matthew Finnegan May 01, 2024 5 mins Atlassian Chatbots Generative AI news Mosyle and Fleet bring new device management options to Apple enterprise Apple's growing enterprise market share is generating tons of opportunity for the company's partners in the device management market. Their approaches reflect the diversity of use. By Jonny Evans May 01, 2024 4 mins Apple Mobile Device Management Mobile Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe