Ad Sales and Ops Jobs Could Figure Into Yahoo Layoffs

Reports that Yahoo will shortly lay off several hundred staffers should come as no surprise to those of us who have tracked the company over the past year (See ClickZ’s recent coverage linked below). CEO Jerry Yang foreshadowed this moment during his very first earnings call in July when he promised change at the company. And he more recently reinforced that promise with his October declaration that Yahoo would narrow its focus to become a “starting point” for consumers and a powerful Web-wide inventory source for advertisers.

Reading between the lines, one spin on those comments goes like this: Content operations jobs are going away, and by the way, we’ll be eliminating the walls (and redundancies) between our ad network holdings.

If that interpretation has any merit, many ad sales and operations folks at BlueLithium, Right Media and its in-house network sales group might be getting pink slips for Valentine’s Day. If I were a betting man I’d put money on it. After all, back in September Jupiter analyst Emily Riley told ClickZ Yahoo was “considering merging and retraining sales teams” and “centralizing sales efforts” across all its acquired properties.

Related:

Yahoo Shows Signs of Display Ad Growth in Q3, Builds Publisher Network
Yahoo’s Exec Departures: Brain Drain or Natural Exodus?
Yahoo Buys BlueLithium, Dreaming of Network Dominance
Yahoo’s Yang Promises Changes Following Q2 Earnings Talk