Warner Bros. Discovery to cut 30% of ad sales teams 

Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly set for a major round of layoffs as the HBO Max operator continues to cut costs.

According to Axios, the company, which has already made several drastic measures in an effort to save US$3 billion, will cut about 30% of its ad sales team in the coming weeks.

These cuts will be made across both WarnerMedia and Discovery ad teams, with the combined company housing around 40,000 staff overall.

The report was later verified by Variety, which confirmed that the company laid off 100 staff on Tuesday with further cuts expected in the coming weeks and months. 

While many of the cuts will be forced redundancies, WBD in June began a ‘Voluntary Separation Program’ for certain groups within its US ad sales business. 

WBD recorded restructuring charges of US$496 million for Q2 including content impairments, along with US$329 million of content development write-offs that came “from a global strategic review of content following the merger.”

WBD closed its upfront with US$6 billion in ad commitments. This is some way off its rivals, with Disney and NBCUniversal booking US$9 billion and US$7 billion respectively.

Away from its ad business, WBD has undergone major leadership changes since closing the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia in April. Last month, the company announced an overhauled leadership team across MENA and EMEA under Jamie Cook.

WBD has also made savings this week by exiting Joyn, the German-language streaming JV established in 2019 between Discovery and ProSiebenSat.1.