Team Internet slashes a quarter of its workforce as Google Adsense for Domains hits financials.
Team Internet Group (AIM: TIG, OTCQX: TIGXF) published first-half earnings today, and the impacts of Google’s changes to AdSense for Domains are highly visible.
For the first six months of the year, revenue at Team Internet plummeted 36% to $263.9 million. Net revenue fell 25% to $72.8 million as margin improved.
The company swung to a loss for the period. It posted a $7.0 million operating loss and a $14.1 million loss after taxes.
Team Internet also announced that it fired 200 employees. This is about a quarter of its workforce.
The challenges stem from Google’s changes to AdSense for Domains, the primary monetization channel for Team Internet. Google is opting all advertisers out of the program and requiring them to opt in for their ads to show on the channel.
Team Internet and its competitors are transitioning to Google’s Related Search for Content (RSOC), which requires ads to be displayed on pages with relevant content.
As a result, TIG’s Search segment revenue fell 52% in the half.
However, the company also faced headwinds in its comparison shopping portals, where revenue declined by 10.6%.
Its domain name business grew 1.9%. It won a contract to manage registry services for .co for ten years, but lost a contract with Radix.
Team Internet’s peers who are heavily involved in search arbitrage are likely facing similar business impacts.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
