Paul Sigaloff among Yahoo execs to leave as company ‘narrows focus’
Vice president, head of Asia Pacific at Yahoo, Paul Sigaloff, is understood to be one of a number of staff set to depart the company locally, as it tightens its workforce across 2023.
Yahoo is the latest of the major tech companies to make cuts to its workforce, after Microsoft, Meta, Twitter, and Amazon have all done so in recent months, with more expected to come at Google.
Sigaloff to depart Yahoo in company-wide cuts
It said it is “narrowing its focus” in transforming its ad tech division, Yahoo for Business, in order to “set it up for long-term success”. It is understood that the majority of Yahoo’s local commercial team has also been axed in the cuts.
“Over several years, the strategy of our ads business was to compete in the ad tech industry by offering a ‘unified stack’ consisting of our Demand Side Platform (DSP), Supply Side Platform (SSP) and Native platforms,” a statement provided to Mumbrella read. “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.”
“Today, we are narrowing our focus and future investments solely on our flagship DSP business, which has a strong market position and high-growth potential. The new division will be called, simply, Yahoo Advertising. In redoubling our efforts on the DSP on an omni-channel basis, we will prioritise support for our top global customers and re-launch dedicated ad sales teams towards Yahoo’s owned and operated properties (including Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, and more). At the same time, we will sunset our SSP, while fully shifting our Native efforts to the 30-year partnership with Taboola that was announced in November.”
Yahoo did not repond directly to an enquiry about Sigaloff, however provided the following statement on the cuts.
“Given the new focus of the new Yahoo Advertising group, we will reduce the workforce of the former Yahoo For Business division by nearly 50% by the end of 2023 (over 20% of the total workforce of Yahoo, Inc), including nearly 1,000 employees this week. 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.”
Sigaloff also did not respond to a request for comment by Mumbrella.
Sigaloff, also a board member at IAB Australia and UnLtd, was promoted into his role a year ago, spending close to a decade at Yahoo in various roles, including heading up the company’s launch in Australia and New Zealand in 2018.
In 2021, Verizon finalised the sale of Verizon Media (which included Yahoo) to private equity firm, Apollo Global Management for A$6.45 billion, with the sale bringing about a name change for the company, thereafter known as just Yahoo. Verizon maintained a 10% stake in the company.
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Calum Jaspan is News Editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He is also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast.
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