Google restructures ad sales amid AI boom — report

CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Google’s parent company Alphabet is reorganizing a significant portion of its ad sales unit consisting of 30,000 employees, according to a report from The Information.

Sean Downey, the executive overseeing ad sales in the Americas, revealed the plans to reshape the teams but did not specify if layoffs would be involved. 

The restructuring aims to streamline operations as Google increasingly relies on machine learning to automate ad placement and creation. 

The tech giant continues to invest heavily in new technologies to maintain dominance in the online advertising market. Google unveiled a “new era of AI-powered ads” like Performance Max (PMax) where they introduced a “new, natural-language conversational experience within Google Ads.”

The Information report says, “A growing number of advertisers have adopted PMax since [launch], eliminating the need for some employees who specialized in selling ads for a particular Google service, like search, working together to design ad campaigns for big customers.”

Earlier this year, Alphabet announced widespread layoffs impacting 12,000 roles globally across departments, the largest job cuts in the company’s history.

Google also laid off Waze employees as the mapping app’s advertising system merged with Google Ads technology.