Google Plans Ad Sales Restructuring as Automation Booms

Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30,000-person ad sales unit, an executive told some staff last week, prompting anxiety that some departments will face job cuts.

The planned reorganization comes as Google is relying more on machine-learning techniques to help customers buy even more ads on its search engine, YouTube and other services. Google has offered such tools—which automatically suggest and create new ads that it believes will perform well for customers—for years. Those ads are on pace to generate tens of billions of dollars annually in revenue for the company, said a person with knowledge of the situation. Because these tools don’t require much employee attention, they carry relatively few expenses, so the ad revenue carries a high profit margin.