Condé Nast, Publisher of Vogue, Will Cut 5% of Its Work Force (Published 2023)

The magazine giant Condé Nast will cut about 5 percent of its work force, backtracking on a much-ballyhooed plan to build up an in-house video studio to tap into Hollywood’s demand for film and TV ideas.

The layoffs will affect about 270 employees. Roger Lynch, the chief executive of Condé Nast, told workers in a note on Wednesday morning that the cuts were a response to digital advertising pressures, a decline in social media traffic and shifting audience behaviors, including a move to short-form video. He said the video business would be folded in with the editorial brands.

“While we can’t control platform algorithms or how A.I. may change search traffic,” Mr. Lynch wrote, “we believe our long-term success will be determined by growing the many areas that we can control, including subscriptions and e-commerce, where we directly own the relationship with our audience.”

In an interview, Mr. Lynch said most of the growth in Condé Nast’s video business was happening on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, which are less lucrative for publishers. He said the company would continue to create videos, with producers teaming up with employees at magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue.

“The longer-form videos on YouTube are actually in decline year over year,” Mr. Lynch said. “That is an audience shift, but it was also YouTube chasing what they were seeing happening on TikTok.”

A decade ago, many digital publishers saw Hollywood as a potential wellspring of cash, where producers and directors would transform their dishy magazine stories into scripts for the silver screen. Some invested heavily in building in-house studios or bought them, as Vox Media did when it acquired the film and TV producer Epic in 2019.