Verizon Just Bought Yahoo, What's Up?

You may recall a while ago and in a land that may seem far away, that AOL wanted to merge with Yahoo! It didn’t happen. Fast forward – guess what, it just happened. As we all know, Verizon bought AOL last year for $4.4 Billion dollars and they just bought Yahoo for $4.8 Billion.

So what does it all mean and what is Verizon up to? In the past, Verizon made its money by operating the wireless and cable networks on which advertisers advertise and consumers consume. Clearly Verizon is on a mission to control a sizable portion of the online advertising market. Verizon may fear, and perhaps with some justification, that simply providing the pipes for content may not be enough as competition continues to heat up among the internet companies. In addition, mobile seems to be the platform of the future.

Verizon’s chief executive officer, Lowell McAdam stated that, “Just over a year ago we acquired AOL to enhance our strategy of providing a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers. The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company.” In addition, Tim Armstrong, who heads Verizon’s AOL unit stated that, "Combining Verizon, AOL and Yahoo will create a new powerful competitive rival in mobile media, and an open, scaled alternative offering for advertisers and publishers."

So there you have it, with mobile users consuming more and more of the online content, having access to Yahoo’s very large customer base, more than one billion active users per month of which 600 million are mobile users, the deal seems like a match made in heaven.

If you want to get your business in front of these consumers – give us a call. We here at Front Man Marketing are experts at creating ads for the mobile platform.