The Super Bowl is a week away. For non-football fans, that means the greatest ad night of the year. But some corporations have little to celebrate.
America Online, better known as AOL, is restructuring. That means AOL job cuts, and plenty of them. There will be some hiring, but only in the business sector. It’s unclear how many will be laid off and how many will be hired, but old worries and new resumes are reported to be flooding AOL New York City headquarters. Why is this happening? Because the advertising landscape is changing. Programmatic advertising is now the big thing in firms across the globe. That means they’re letting machines and big data buy ad space, not people negotiating for it.Programmatic advertising currently makes of 40% of all their advertising department, a number that will only increase as time goes on. Could this mean entire AOL teams will merge into a big one? If that’s the case, then how many jobs will be lost here?
When I was a kid, I was always told that in the future, not only would I be competing with other people for jobs, but with machines and computers as well. I didn’t believe it because that was a world I couldn’t comprehend. I think we’re all comprehending it now. Over the years, how many manual jobs and how much labor has been lost because the computer can do things better? This isn’t a case of good ol’ day syndrome; but this is a reminder that things aren’t what they use to be. America Online is not unique in it’s predicament. These changes are being made in boardrooms around the world. This is why in this century, computer skills are critical, no matter what profession one is entering. It’s better to have a back up skill too just in case a machine takes over your career.