“Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017”, tweeted AOL’s Tim Armstrong in confirming the new umbrella company, Oath, will control Verizon’s acquisition of early internet giants Yahoo and AOL. Business Insider was the first to report the nearly $4.8 billion buy that would give Verizon control over Yahoo’s core internet businesses, namely Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports, as well as the Huffington Post.
This merger is Verizon’s latest attempt to break out of their existing wireless and landline staples into a more powerful mobile environment and expand their advertising ventures, poising them to become a direct competitor with internet titans Google and Facebook. Armstrong outlined three goals Verizon has set for Oath to build on their newly acquired brands: attract more than 10 million content creators, reach two billion consumers, and achieve revenues in the $10 billion to $20 billion range. These figures represent a 700 million increase over their current reach and a nearly 12% addition to Verizon’s revenues.
While these seem like lofty goals, Oath will center their new campaign across news, sports entertainment, finance, and technology segments. According to Tim Armstrong, “We are going to basically compete the same way you have cable distribution. We will have an analogous internet distributions system overall. We will also partner with every other major provider: Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Snapchat. We have an Omni channel business model that works basically, not just with our properties and our partners, but across the larger ecosystem.”
The merger with Yahoo will give Verizon access to Yahoo’s email, internet search and aforementioned news services dynamically enhancing Oath and its subsidiaries’ ability to brand advertise to a much larger market than previously available. Former president of digital media at CBS, Ezra Kucharz commented, “Oath can build on its global reach [with] unprecedented access to consumer data and behavior.”
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