Verizon recently made it official; they’re all set to purchase Yahoo for $4.83 billion, and at this point, with both regulators and shareholders seemingly on board, the deal seems to be set in stone. This will net them all of Yahoo’s media, advertising and technology assets, as well as all of the shares and stake they held. Just like with their AOL acquisition, they plan to integrate Yahoo’s advertising technology into their own services, and draw from their new toy’s media offerings for their own media services and Go90. The question that has to be asked with Yahoo, that didn’t necessarily have to be asked with AOL, is where do Yahoo’s other services fit in? Yahoo has Mail, Answers, and social media site Tumblr, one that’s fast-growing and will soon catch up to the big dogs, if all goes well. Yahoo even has a developer advocacy service for third party developers who grace their platforms and services with their creations.
In essence, Verizon is going to have to get a bit creative in order to integrate Yahoo into their own systems and services in the most painless and profitable way possible. Verizon cannot simply ignore most of what Yahoo has to offer and focus only on what they want; in order for both companies to really see a return on the deal, Verizon is going to have to find ways to integrate themselves into Yahoo’s services and vice versa, and that may not be easy. While the advertising can help Verizon reach large amounts of people aside from their subscribers, and there have been rumors of Verizon somehow leveraging Yahoo’s search technology, the plan for the rest of Yahoo’s assets is thus far hazy at best.
The answer to all of it may be in the form of Millennial Media. Bought up last year for $250 million, the company, headed by a Verizon alumni, specializes in mobile advertising and social engineering, which could mean that they might be the key to Verizon figuring out how best to cross up their own services and Yahoo’s, or Millennial could act as a mobile advertising arm, much like Sprint’s approach with using an inside-outside ad agency. According to analyst firm MoffettNathanson, however, all of these efforts, even if managed properly, could still end up giving Verizon minimal returns, essentially a drop or maybe a quick pour in the proverbial bucket of Verizon groping around outside of the U.S. telecom and mobile spaces.