advert patrons & MarTech consultants Weigh In On the Verizon-AOL Deal

Verizon’s pending buy of AOL for over $4 billion, announced Tuesday, seems to be a clear validation of Tim Armstrong’s ad tech acquisition technique to piece collectively finish-to-end systems for both publishers, including AOL’s own Huffington post and TechCrunch, and advertisers. What does the merger of AOL’s advert tech and content material property with Verizon’s pipes and scale imply for media buyers and the promoting expertise panorama?

Andrew Ruegger, partner and Director of technique for media buying large GroupM told advertising and marketing Land, he’s watching for Verizon’s funding will repay in “a richer quality of digital media buys for brands each historically and programmatically” as cellular advert spend on video ads, specifically, trends upwards with person habits.

Ruegger, like others we spoke with, is looking ahead to the new options media patrons will have in cellular with a new powerhouse competitor in the combine. “it’ll also be nice to peer the 80 % of present mobile ad spend shift away from the facebook and Twitter duo as Verizon becomes a most useful player within the global arena with a singular reach we haven’t considered ahead of.”

Adam Schlachter, Chief funding Officer at DigitasLBi, added in a statment that Verizon’s scale will give AOL the capacity to compete not simply with fb, Twitter and Google, however with the leading streaming systems for television ad dollars. “For AOL, the transfer was a very long time coming. It has been setting itself up for acquisition with contemporary cuts and restructuring, and it wants a huge partner to continue to spur consumer growth and add scale to compete with Google and fb within the ad area,” says Schlacter, “It’s also a just right fit for content distribution as this deal offers it a cell footprint it could possibly by no means have on its own, making it a extra workable competitor to content systems like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and YouTube.”

The deal also changes the look of what’s considered a modern media firm. For Verizon, the acquisition “fuels its efforts to redefine what a up to date day get right of entry to supplier seems like as the sector more and more consumes extra via cell, on-demand, and over-the-top units,” provides Schlacter.

advertising technologist, Scott Brinker, Ion Interactive Co-Founder, President and CTO concurs that the mix may have an extraordinarily vital impact on the competitive advertising landscape. “i feel Verizon’s acquisition of AOL is particularly fascinating as a result of it represents vertical integration throughout the marketing know-how channel — from software that entrepreneurs function, to popular destination internet sites, to connectivity to particular person customers,” he says.

whereas much of the focal point across the acquisition since the news broke has been round AOL’s ad tech capabilities as the driving force for Verizon’s hobby, David Smith, CEO and founding father of media planning and shopping for agency, Mediasmith, points to AOL’s media assets as a key factor as well. “Verizon, while a pacesetter in distribution thru their network, has been lacking in content material. Comcast has a major lead on them in this regard. The a large number of AOL media residences, lots of which stand on their own, blended with AOL’s programmatic selling and video content material eventually give Verizon a meaningful entry within the content material wars.”

based on the rapid questions about whether AOL plans to spin off sure, or all, components of its media business, AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong, who plans to remain on after the deal closes, instructed TechCrunch (an AOL firm) Tuesday, “We’re going to be in the content trade … and if anything we’ll most definitely add an increasing number of heft to our content trade over time.”

Verizon brings AOL’s content material distribution capabilities to a completely new stage, and by means of tapping AOL’s advert tech Verizon can energy ad serving, concentrated on and attribution over IP tv via tens of millions of smartphones.

As for the place it puts Verizon amongst competing carriers, Shlachter says, “this implies Verizon + AOL yields extra opportunities to monetize all of their assets and customer touchpoints, giving them a bonus over different providers. sure, AT&T offered Fullscreen remaining yr and is set to obtain DirectTV later this yr. And Comcast and NBC universal got here together a pair years ago. however none of these moves harness the vast quantity of precious consumer data, at scale, so that it will be available thru this new entity.”

concerning the author

Ginny Marvin

As third Door Media’s paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid affiliate marketing online topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and advertising and marketing Land. With greater than 15 years of promoting expertise, Ginny has held each in-house and agency administration positions. She provides search advertising and marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce firms and can also be discovered on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

(Some photography used beneath license from Shutterstock.com.)