PointRoll updates tech team, lays off 20

PointRoll laid off about 20 employees this week.*

Through a spokesman, the Gannett-owned King of Prussia adtech company described the move as an update to its 300-person staff. PointRoll is moving in the direction of industry trends: mobile, video and social. That means letting go of staffers that don’t necessarily fit that bill and hiring ones that do, a PointRoll spokesman said in a statement.

Founded in 2000, PointRoll is an older, more mature company that has lived through various stages of the tech industry. The company paints these layoffs as a necessary growing pain to make sure it stays relevant.

The layoffs may also be a nod to PointRoll’s efforts to build its software-as-a-service side of the business. The company hired a new CTO this summer whose expertise lies in software-as-a-service, and, at the time, PointRoll CEO Mario Diez said he was considering adding licensing fees to the company’s revenue lineup.

All the employees laid off received severance, the spokesman confirmed.

PointRoll’s the second big Philly tech company to announce a round of layoffs this week. Conshohocken ecommerce optimization company Monetate was the other.

Below, see PointRoll’s statement:

PointRoll has remained an industry leader in the interactive advertising landscape by, in part, staying ahead of technology trends. With the pace of our business and its concomitant technology needs continuing to accelerate, it’s vital to keep our developer and operations teams forward-focused in order to maintain our leadership position. In the past two years, as much of our business has moved into deep, data-driven digital communications beyond the desktop to mobile, video and social platforms, this requires us to let a bit more than 5% of our team go. I’m sure these people will all land well very soon, but the fact is – we are growing, and we have a significant number of open job recs throughout the company today.

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*PointRoll said they let go “a bit more than five percent” of their total team. We did the math and came up with roughly 20. The PointRoll spokesman would not confirm this number.