Why Oracle is shutting down its advertising business, which once brought in billions in revenue

• Oracle plans to wind down its advertising division, it said as it reported fiscal 2024 earnings.
• Oracle’s advertising revenue fell from $2 billion in 2022 to $300 million in fiscal 2024.
• A big change with Meta’s ad business and a lack of investment cut Oracle’s ad ambitions.

Oracle is getting out of the advertising business.

The company disclosed that it plans to wind down its advertising division while reporting its fourth-quarter earnings for its fiscal year of 2024. Advertising brought in $300 million during the fiscal year, down significantly from $2 billon in 2022, as Business Insider has previously reported on.

Oracle spent more than $4 billion acquiring companies to compete for ad dollars over the years. In 2014, Oracle bought marketing tech firm BlueKai for a reported $400 million and data broker Datalogix for $1.2 billion. Oracle bought once-buzzy measurement firm Moat in 2017 for a reported $850 million.

Oracle’s role in the advertising industry has been dwindling for the past few years. The software giant had big ambitions to help marketers piece together data collected from websites, email, sales, and social media to create cohesive and efficient ads.

Oracle’s advertising and marketing business took a big hit when Meta stopped allowing third parties like Oracle to sell advertisers data used to buy targeted ads in 2018, post-Cambridge Analytica. Oracle then tried pitching cookieless products to marketers but wasn’t able to find the right fit for the product, Business Insider previously reported.

Former employees previously told Business Insider that Oracle failed to invest in its two advertising and marketing products: Marketing Cloud and Oracle Advertising. Oracle tried to combine the two divisions, and a big reorganization resulted in mass layoffs in 2022.

Oracle is the latest software giant to pull back on advertising. Rival Adobe shut down the core part of its ad business in 2020, and Salesforce has had mixed success with advertising.