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Mergers and Acquisitions Technology Redundancies

Videology sheds 6% of its headcount in global restructure

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By Ronan Shields | Digital Editor

March 7, 2018 | 5 min read

Videology, an adtech company heavily rumored to be seeking a buyer amid the much-discussed consolidation in the sector, has undergone a corporate restructure which has resulted in it losing 5-6% of its global headcount.

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The news of Videology's restructure comes shortly after it saw a switch in its EMEA leadership team

The process, which began in late 2017, culminated in the internal announcement of the redundancies of "five-to-six percent" of its headcount last week, with the cutbacks understood to have impacted its workforce in the US, APAC and Europe.

Although the company did not go into specifics of exactly how many roles were to be phased out in the latest restructure, Videology's Crunchbase profile listed it as having "251-500 employees" prior to The Drum contacting it for clarification.

Ryan Jamboretz, Videology, chief revenue officer, confirmed the cost-cutting measures with The Drum, adding that such moves were normal for a company that intends to keep itself "lean and mean" with the newly formed entity able to focus on its core client base.

"In many ways, it's looking at limiting our investment into what I would call 'edge cases'," he added, defining this term as customers or geographies that were not returning as much yield as its core priorities.

"And really it is just a matter of focusing a bit," said Jamboretz. “Yeah, I called edge cases internally which is really the kind of thing we could not afford to spend money on at the expense of profitability.”

Videology specializes in the fast-growing advanced TV advertising market and has raised almost $200m in funding since it was founded in 2008, counting the US’ largest telecoms provider Comcast among its investors. To date, it has partnered with leading programming providers such as Sky and Univision on either side of the Atlantic.

Commenting on the video adtech specialist's priorities in the near-to-mid term future, Jamboretz, added: "I encourage you to kind of look at the client base in Europe, places like Australia, places like the US [which are] heavily weighted towards big TV players, whether those are big MVPDs or big cable companies, broadcasters or the major agency buying groups that want to play TV into premium video."

Videology’s latest funding round came in the form of a $80m credit facility via way of an agreement with Tennenbaum Capital, and FastPay – the largest such facility the media finance company has ever arranged. Speaking at the time, Scott Ferber, Videology chief executive officer, said the funding round would enable the company to “expand our business further and faster.”

However, since then, it has been reported by Business Insider that Videology has appointed adtech advisory bank Luma Partners to help facilitate a sale. The adtech outfit had formerly been linked with AT&T over a proposed sale by several market commentators, although many note that the likely opposition of the US administration to its proposed Timer Warner takeover will dominate the telecoms outfit’s priorities.

Videology recently underwent an overhaul of its EMEA leadership, with long-time European chief Jana Eisenstein departing to take up the role of EVP advertising platform solutions at ProSiebenSat.1 Media.

Former Guardian executive Tim Gentry subsequently stepped into the role, having joined the video adtech specialist 12 months earlier as senior vice president, advertiser and agency, EMEA.

News of Videology’s restructure comes within days of The Drum revealing that Viant – an adtech firm offering ‘people-based marketing opportunities’ – is to close its doors in the UK after it was excluded from an earlier M&A deal that saw Time Inc’s UK operations sold to private equity house Epiris Fund II.

Mergers and Acquisitions Technology Redundancies

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