Verizon’s head of Media & Advertising (also known as the head of OATH, the company formed by the AOL and Yahoo acquisitions), is reportedly in talks to leave the largest wireless carrier. Tim Armstrong was successful in completing the acquisitions of those two companies – AOL and Yahoo – but has not been successful in getting Verizon’s Media and Advertising strategy up and running. Verizon’s streaming TV service, Go90, was a pretty big failure when it launched. This was mostly because the company wanted original content on the service, and did not include any popular channels, like AT&T’s DIRECTV NOW has.
Armstrong has a strong history in the world of advertising. He worked at Google in the early 2000s, and then AOL poached him in the second half of that decade after he had proved himself with the outstanding ad revenues he brought in at Google. Armstrong was at AOL until it was purchased by Verizon in June 2015. After AOL was acquired by Verizon, Armstrong would take over as their head of media and advertising, which later turned into “OATH”, and became a subsidiary inside the company. OATH has had its’ struggles since forming a little over a year ago. And in fact, many analysts believe that Armstrong should spin OATH out of Verizon and take it public. That would likely give Armstrong and his team a bit more freedom to do what they want.
According to a report out of The Wall Street Journal, however, Armstrong is looking to leave the company. He hasn’t left just yet, so there is a chance that he does stay on-board at Verizon as CEO of OATH. But it looks very likely that he is heading out the door. And it’s unclear what would happen to OATH if he did leave Verizon, considering the company is already floundering.