Verizon has gone back on its oath to advertisers and publishers.
The telecom giant said Monday it will rebrand its media and advertising division, Oath, as part of a company-wide restructuring. Oath will be renamed Verizon Media Group, and the rest of the corporation will be consolidated into two other buckets: consumer and business.
Verizon said the reorganization, which takes effect January 2019, will help it focus more on its 5G capabilities.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg and Oath President K. Guru Gowrappan are “meeting with senior leaders today to discuss strategy,” a spokesperson from the company told AdExchanger. There were no major shifts in leadership announced at this time.
“Our strategy is designed to elevate one of the most successful companies in the world to the greatest company in the world,” Vestberg said in an email shared with Verizon employees Monday. “It’s a big leap and in order to realize this vision, it has to start with our customers.”
Verizon’s digital advertising platform shares some similarities with AT&T-owned Xandr, led by CEO Brian Lesser. Both house ad tech assets and are premised on using the telco’s enormous data asset to improve monetization of media impressions.
Former Oath CEO Tim Armstrong, at the time of his departure this year, had not obtained the hoped-for access to Verizon’s subscriber data. Even so, Oath remains a valuable source of scaled programmatic ad supply for advertisers and ad agencies.
Verizon has also suffered some setbacks in its content and advertising strategy: In July, the company dissolved its content app Go90. Two months later, Armstrong announced he would be stepping down from his position at the end of the year.
In October, Oath reported $1.8 billion in Q3 revenue, marking a 6.9% decrease YOY.
