Microsoft has reportedly laid off the vast majority of its global advertising sales team, responsible for selling inventory on MSN, Skype, Bing and more.
These redundancies are part of the wider job cuts Microsoft announced in July, which are set to axe 18,000 jobs in total.
The news follows an earlier report from CRN claiming that Microsoft had closed its Global Agencies and Accounts team, as well as the Yarn creative team – but it now appears that nearly all of the advertising team has been made redundant.
The exception to this, according to Business Insider, is the Microsoft Advertising executive team, who will remain in place. Business Insider suggests this may mean a streamlined version of the division will remain operational going forward.