Yellow Media is cutting about 10% of its workforce, mainly jobs related to print directories, as the Yellow Pages publisher transforms itself for an increasingly digital marketplace.
The cuts come ahead of its new chief executive, a 20-year veteran of the digital media businesses, who will take over in January to help the Montreal-based company achieve its goal.
The roughly 300 positions will be phased out by the end of this year, with the remainder to be gone by early 2014.
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“To ensure we’re positioned to accelerate digital revenue growth, we have made the difficult decision to change the dynamics of our workforce,” said chief financial officer Ginette Maille said in a news release on Tuesday.
Current employees affected by the reorganization will be placed in other functions where possible, Maille said.
As Yellow Media offers more online advertising services to businesses, it has already hired about 175 people for information technology and digital media jobs and plans to expand these areas.
The phone book publisher directories is trying find its place in an Internet-based marketplace where search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing have eaten into the need for paper directories.
Yellow Media also has expanded its services from business listings to digital services, including producing videos and building websites for small and medium-sized businesses.
Yellow Media also made job cuts at its Vancouver-based Canpages directories in 2012, but didn’t disclose the number of layoffs.
The company has said digital revenues make up 43% of its revenues. It had 283,000 advertisers as of Sept. 30, compared with 319,000 in the same period in 2012.
On Jan. 1, Julien Billot will take over as chief executive. The 45-year-old has been most recently head of the media group for France’s Solocal Group, formerly PagesJaunes Groupe. Prior to joining Solocal, Billot was CEO of Lagardere Active’s digital and new business group.
Billot succeeds Marc Tellier, who held the post from 2001 until he departed in August.
