Google is now refining its advertising sales team, impacting a substantial number of employees dedicated to serving major businesses. This decision comes in the wake of workforce reductions spanning various divisions of the company.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - SEPTEMBER 02: The new Google logo is displayed at the Google headquarters on September 2, 2015 in Mountain View, California. 

Reducing Workforce in Ad Sales Team

In a continuation of its recent restructuring efforts, Google is now streamlining its advertising sales team, impacting hundreds of employees catering to major businesses.  This move follows a series of layoffs across different divisions, including Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, Google Assistant, and core engineering.

The ongoing restructuring process is part of Google's annual review to optimize team structures for improved service to ad customers, as reported by Engadget. 

As a result, the advertising sales team is experiencing cuts in hundreds of roles globally. Affected employees will have the opportunity to explore available positions within the team or elsewhere within Google.

Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, announced the recent wave of layoffs. This follows closely on the heels of the previous reduction of over a thousand roles in hardware and engineering divisions, signaling a broader strategic adjustment within the company.

Google is actively working on automating various processes, with products like Performance Max utilizing artificial intelligence to optimize advertisers' budget allocations across different products. This restructuring represents the next phase of that initiative, with the cuts primarily affecting the large customer-sales team. 

Moving forward, Business Insider reported that the Global Customer Solutions (GCS) channel will serve as the core avenue for scaling growth, dynamically delivering tailored treatments to every customer. 

Meanwhile, the Large Customer Sales (LCS) team will shift its focus to driving transformational growth for the most substantial and sophisticated clients, as outlined by Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer.

Acknowledging the challenges posed by these changes, Schindler expressed confidence in the decision's alignment with the best interests of customers, partners, and the overall business. However, he recognized the difficulty these adjustments may bring, particularly within the LCS teams.

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Google's recent layoffs align with the broader trend of job cuts within the tech industry, a phenomenon that saw thousands of positions eliminated in 2023. 

In the initial weeks of the current year, Amazon initiated workforce reductions, impacting hundreds across services such as video game streaming platform Twitch, Prime Video, MGM Studios, and Audible. Discord, Meta, Unity, and Duolingo have also joined the list of companies implementing layoffs in 2024.

Previous Layoffs

Reports from December revealed Google's intentions to reorganize its ad sales unit, consisting of over 30,000 employees, with a focus on leveraging machine learning to facilitate ad purchases on flagship products like Google Search and YouTube, the primary revenue sources for the company. 

The ongoing layoffs primarily target ad sales teams dealing with large businesses, aligning with the company's strategic shift towards a more automated and machine-learning-driven advertising approach.

Simultaneously, The Information reported that the corporation is said to be offering substantial amounts of stock, amounting to millions of dollars, to specific researchers within DeepMind, its artificial intelligence division. This strategic move aims to deter these researchers from leaving for competing entities such as OpenAI.

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