Video ad platform Videology laid off about 32 staffers – or about 8% of its workforce – in recent months [Update: Videology said they occurred in January], as the company pivots to larger enterprise and linear TV deals.
The company has since hired about 25 people and claims the transitional impact to its organization was immaterial.
Videology employs between 375 and 400 people in total.
The cuts largely affected Videology’s commercialization division, which CEO Scott Ferber said mostly included “front-facing” roles like sales and client service. The layoffs did not impact its product and tech teams.
Videology notes a decentralization of the TV practice it formalized two years ago. At the time, programmatic TV was in its infancy, and digital and linear convergence hadn’t come to fruition.
“When we started the TV practice, it was about this evolving TV piece that required a dedicated, committed practice, whereas now, it’s deployed to the rest of the organization,” Ferber said. “Every employee is expected to know TV.”
Ferber added that, at the close of each year, Videology looks at ways to streamline its business.
“We announced large enterprise customers like Adobe, Sky and AT&T in the last six months,” Ferber said. These deals contrast with the smaller deals that used to make up the bulk of Videology’s business. “It became pretty apparent to us that our business was evolving and we needed to realign our organization to reflect that.”
Nevertheless, Videology – which serves the sell side through an ad server and yield management system as well as other tools to build private exchanges – also focuses on the buy side. Its video demand-side platform competes with the likes of The Trade Desk and TubeMogul.
Although it’s unclear what percentage of Videology’s business stems from its buy-side tools, a number of DSPs that were once predominantly relegated to display have downsized in the past year due to a mix of factors.
Such factors include a challenging fundraising environment, cost pressures associated with agency fees (or the percentage the DSP would take based on volume or campaigns running through its platform) and the move to more software-based sales approaches than those based on pure media margins.
Ferber insists that forces that have impacted other companies, such as downward pressure on agency fees, were not at play here. And, because Videology is rooted in video, the company’s go-to-market strategy has differed from some of the other display-oriented DSPs impacted by a general tightening of the belt, he says.
“We find that clients pay you for the value you provide,” he said. “If you provide great product, service and capabilities, there’s opportunity. In no way, shape or form is the industry contraction or pricing pressure that you suggest the cause of what we did in our reorganization. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I feel like we’re in a different place.”
Videology did about $300 million in revenue in 2014, the last time it shared revenue figures publicly. Ferber declined to share current revenue details.
“I can say we’ve seen tremendous growth and the business has gone incredibly well,” he said. “The business will continue to evolve overall, but we feel we are at the beginning of this inflection point where digital video and TV are finally converging.”
