Yahoo Australia is reportedly set to lay off senior executives as the company shifts its business model again and deals with declining online ad spending.
Paul Sigaloff, the company’s well-liked head of APAC, was set to be among those culled according to sources close to the company who spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald anonymously. The cuts were announced internally last week.
These cuts for Yahoo are part of a global company downsizing. The company expects that it will eventually reduce its total headcount by around 20 per cent or around 1,600 positions globally.
A Yahoo Australia spokesman declined to answer questions about how many roles or positions were being eliminated, when asked by the SMH.
“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,” the spokesman said.
That simplified business will result in half of the workers on its broadcaster ad business losing their jobs by the end of the year. Yahoo will narrow its focus on one part of its advertising business to be called Yahoo Advertising.
Many of Yahoo’s Australian staffers sit within its media business that produce free content on news, finance, and sport. The editorial sides of those divisions were not affected by the cuts.
However, Yahoo is not the only company experiencing challenges on its business and making cuts as a result.
News Corp cut 1,250 jobs around the world and slashed staff benefits and perks in order to to save costs. Spotify slashed 600 jobs around the world, or around 6 per cent of its total headcount. Google cut 12,000 jobs around the world, with the future still unclear for Australian workers. Meta laid off 11,000 employees at the end of last year and is reportedly considering more redundancies. And let’s not even start on what happened at Twitter.
