Diply lets go of 40 employees

Digital content company Diply has confirmed the departure of 40 colleagues in its Toronto and London, Ont. offices, as well as New York, as the result of restructuring its revenue operations and an effort to reduce staff across its video, social strategy and development operations. In a memo provided to MiC, a company representative cited “serious issues in the market” and that the company has “continuously to [sic] adapted to changes in this uber competitive landscape and that’s what we’ve done again today… I’m confident that these changes will set us up for the next phase in Diply’s evolution.”

Amazon’s ad revenue surpasses $2.2 billion once again

E-commerce giant Amazon’s total revenue for Q2 came in at $52.9 billion, just shy of the $53.41 billion estimated by Thomson Reuters. But the results, announced July 26, saw a major growth in its “other” revenue drivers – which is largely comprised of its ad business. Ad sales came in at $2.2 billion, up 132% from last year. This is the second straight quarter Amazon has surpassed $2 billion in ad sales. The company’s CFO Brian Olsavsky said in a conference call on Thursday that the ad business, as well as Amazon’s cloud business, were a “big contributor” to its twelve-fold profit increase (a record $2.5 billion), as a result of their respective margins being so high.

Facebook lets users watch content together

Facebook launched its global feature, Watch Party, in an effort to get users to connect over video content. The feature allows people in a Facebook group to watch live or recorded videos simultaneously from different devices, allowing them to comment and interact with one another in real-time. The feature was launched earlier this week, and is currently being tested for an expansion into Facebook’s Pages.