It's hard to say what the quarter would have been like without a major ad push in Q3. Maybe the ads were bad, but maybe their revenue would have been worse without them-- solely from a business perspective, you have to be careful with statements like that.

For all I know, their advertisement strategy is what saved the company from needing to lay off 20k in this announcement.

Unlikely. Those Seinfeld ads didn't actually try to sell anything. A bit of overpriced, mild brand reinforcement most likely would not have affected the company's short-term prospects.

By the way, what M$ is doing here is very screwed up. They're laying off the first batch (1400) immediately, but using the remaining 3600 as a threat to make competition cutthroat. I might just quit if I worked there.

Wow, that is really sad and not something I would have expected from MS.

It's also probably not true. It may happen, but there's no evidence it was intended that way. Layoffs are often done slowly in tranches.

To be fair, it sounded like a good business decision but it was poorly executed.