BuzzFeed announced on Wednesday that it plans to layoff roughly 100 employees.
The cuts will be focused on BuzzFeed's sales and marketing side in the U.S, with some layoffs hitting staffers in the U.K.'s news and business teams.
"As our strategy evolves, we need to evolve our organization, too — particularly our Business team," Jonah Peretti, Buzzfeed's co-founder and CEO, said in an email to staff on Wednesday.
Peretti explained that the business team "was built to support direct sold advertising but will need to bring in different, more diverse expertise to support these new lines of business."
"Unfortunately, this means we have to say goodbye to some talented colleagues whose work has helped us tremendously," he said.
BuzzFeed employs about 1,700 people globally. The layoffs were first reported on Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.
Greg Coleman, BuzzFeed's president since 2014, will also be transitioning to a new role with the company and will continue to be an adviser.
Peretti added that in the U.K., the company will focus on "content for global audiences and our core U.K. News beats," such as investigations, politics, media, and social justice. He said BuzzFeed intends to make reductions in the U.K. across sales and news.
The layoffs come just two weeks after it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that BuzzFeed was "on track to miss its revenue target for this year by a significant amount."
The report noted that BuzzFeed was "targeting revenue of around $350 million in 2017 but is expected to fall short of that figure by about 15% to 20%."
BuzzFeed wasn't the only major media company to announce layoffs on Wednesday. ESPN said that it was laying off 150 people, with most of cuts coming from in studio production, digital content and technology.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
