Google Might Already Be Replacing Some Ad Sales Jobs With AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report at The Information says that AI might already be taking people's jobs at Google. The report cites people briefed on the plans and says Google intends to 'consolidate staff, including through possible layoffs, by reassigning employees at its large customer sales unit who oversee relationships with major advertisers.' According to the report, the jobs are being vacated because Google's new AI tools have automated them. The report says a future restructuring was apparently already announced at a department-wide Google Ads meeting last week.

Google announced a 'new era of AI-powered ads' in May, featuring a 'natural-language conversational experience within Google Ads, designed to jump-start campaign creation and simplify Search ads.' Google said its new AI could scan your website and 'generate relevant and effective keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets,' making the Google Ads chatbot one part designer and one part sales expert. The report also notes another benefit of making AI do this work: 'Because these tools don't require much employee attention, they carry relatively few expenses, so the ad revenue carries a high-profit margin.'

The Information report says, 'A growing number of advertisers have adopted PMax since [launch], eliminating the need for some employees who specialized in selling ads for a particular Google service, like search, working together to design ad campaigns for big customers.' [Google's Performance Max, or 'PMax,' is a Google ad tool that can help advertisers actually make ad content and determine the best places for it -- YouTube, Search, Gmail, etc.] According to the report, as of a year ago, Google had about 13,500 people devoted to this kind of sales work, a huge chunk of the 30,000-strong ad division. These 13,500 people aren't necessarily all going to be affected, and those who are won't necessarily be laid off -- they could be reassigned to other areas in Google. We should know the scale of Google Ad's big re-org soon. The report says, 'Some employees expect the changes to be announced next month.'

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