Microsoft Advertising's digital evangelist Mel Carson leaves in 'round of lay offs'
The man responsible for building Microsoft Advertising's relationships with the online advertising community is leaving the company as part of what he describes as a 'round of lay offs'.
Mel Carson revealed on his blog that his role as the company's 'digital marketing evangelist' had been 'eliminated'.
He wrote: "Seven years (2555 days) to the day after I walked into Microsoft in London to help launch adCenter back in 2005, I was told this morning that my role has been 'eliminated' in a round of lay offs.
"I’ve been told by HR that it’s fine to talk about my new job search on social networks and my blog as the termination has nothing to do with my performance in the job. So as a true social media aficionado, I’m letting you all know that while I’m sad it’s come to this after creating millions of engagements online, writing thousands of blog posts, interviewing hundreds of industry luminaries and speaking at many, many conferences around the world, I have nothing but fantastic memories of working at Microsoft Advertising – 50 of which I’ll write about and publish here in the next couple of weeks."
The Drum is seeking clarification regarding Carson's comment about a round of lay offs.
Microsoft has confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it cut some advertising and marketing jobs on Wednesday but details beyond that remain sparse.
Carson began his digital advertising career as an editor at the search engine LookSmart in 2000, spending time at 24/7 search as an account director before moving to Microsoft in 2005. He was latterly based in Seattle.
Update
A Microsoft spokesperson this afternoon told The Drum: "We can confirm that a very small number of UK employees have been informed that their roles are at risk of redundancy. We are working closely with the affected employees to support them through this transition and help them apply for other roles within Microsoft. At the same time, we continue to maintain our hiring efforts and currently have more than 5,000 open positions worldwide.”
The spokesperson declined to elaborate on the actual number of job cuts, or the departments affected.