- Adtech layoffs have continued into this summer — including at some companies that already made cuts.
- Ezoic, MiQ, Outbrain, and Brightcove are among the adtech companies with recent layoffs.
- They cite lower ad rates and prolonged uncertainty about the global economy.
For some adtech companies, the huge wave of layoffs that struck in 2022 and at the turn of this year wasn’t the last, amid prolonged economic uncertainty and a tepid ad market.
In the past couple of months, some adtech firms have reduced their head count. In some instances, these were on top of layoffs from months earlier.
Ezoic, a publisher-monetization platform, laid off 84 staffers, or about 28% of its workforce, earlier this week. The company had already laid off about 35 workers in December and about 10 more in February, Insider previously reported. The company also shut down its affiliate program this month.
In an email to the team also published on its website, Ezoic CEO Dwayne Lafleur wrote that while the company hit record sales in the first half of last year and grew its team by 62% in 2022, this year had been much harder.
“Inflation has skyrocketed, interest rates have risen, crypto markets have crashed, and technology investment and spending have declined,” Lafleur wrote. “As a result, ad rates are down nearly 35% from their peak.”
The content-recommendation company Outbrain followed up a small round of layoffs last summer with another reduction in force in June. About 90 employees, or 10% of the company, were affected, Calcalist first reported. A spokesperson for the company, which reported a 9% decline in revenue in the first quarter of the year, said that “this past year has seen rapid change across our industry and our business” and that it was working on efficiency, while investing in its growth areas.
On May 3, Brightcove — a video-streaming platform with a recently launched ad-monetization product — said it would incur charges of between $2 million and $2.2 million related to a 10% reduction of its workforce affecting about 70 people. Brightcove CEO Marc DeBevoise cited “near-term revenue challenges, including lengthening sales cycles and lower overages and entitlement commitments.”
Also this month, the private-equity-backed adtech firm MiQ shut down its office in Germany and made redundancies in the UK and other markets, which affected about 4% of its employees, the company confirmed. A spokesperson cited challenges related to the global economic downturn.
“In spite of this, our underlying business health remains strong — and while this is by no means an easy decision — the careful and intentional steps we’re taking to rebalance and streamline our operations will allow us to invest in and sustain company growth now and in the years ahead,” the spokesperson said.
Adtech-industry insiders are also keeping a close eye on the fallout from MediaMath’s bankruptcy. After it shuttered operations last month, more than 300 people lost their jobs, and MediaMath owes at least $125 million to hundreds of adtech firms and other companies. (Insider is listed as a creditor in the bankruptcy filings.)
Elsewhere, large tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon are still cycling through their own previously announced layoffs in some countries, which has affected advertising employees, people familiar with those companies and individual posts on LinkedIn said.
“There’s been a drip of layoffs, and it’s really become a year to ‘get through’ with lead times blowing out” in terms of contracts being signed, Sasha Auzins, the chief operating officer of the tech and data consultancy Elaboration, said.
To be sure, the layoff phenomenon isn’t hitting all adtech companies, and many that made cutbacks — including those listed above — are aggressively shifting priorities and have open roles listed on their websites.
The second half of the year is also traditionally when advertising-funded companies make the bulk of their revenues. The media analyst Brian Wieser wrote earlier this week that several large marketers indicated they were increasing their spending, which signaled that the US advertising market should grow this quarter and “remains on track towards mid-single digit underlying (ex-political) growth for the full year.”
Adweek recently reported a marked slowdown in adtech job openings in 2023, citing recruiters and industry insiders. But there have been some bright spots. Lee Walker, a UK managing director of Expand Group, which specializes in tech and media recruitment, said his agency’s inbound job numbers were up 20% over last month.
“There are some really positive signs,” he added.
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