Oath CEO Tim Armstrong to Leave the Verizon Unit
September 12 2018 - 3:31PM
Dow Jones News
By Aisha Al-Muslim
Verizon Communications Inc. said Oath Chief Executive Tim
Armstrong will depart the media and advertising business at
year-end, and named K. Guru Gowrappan as the subsidiary's next
CEO.
Mr. Gowrappan will become chief executive Oct. 1, Verizon said
Wednesday. He has served as Oath's president and chief operating
officer since April. The former Alibaba Group executive will report
to Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.
Mr. Armstrong, Oath's founder, will help advise the Verizon
subsidiary's management with its transition efforts before leaving
the company at the end of year, Verizon said. He will report to
Verizon Chairman Lowell McAdam.
Mr. Gowrappan, who was Alibaba's global managing director,
focused on international expansion for consumer and enterprise
products while at the Chinese e-commerce giant. Previously, he was
chief operating officer at Quixey, a mobile startup, and prior to
that he was the COO for growth and emerging initiatives at Zynga.
He has also held several leadership roles at Yahoo and
Overture.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Armstrong was in
talks to depart, according to people that were familiar with the
matter.
The Journal reported that Verizon and Oath executives have
disagreed over what some employees within the digital ad unit see
as an overly conservative approach to using wireless subscriber
data to boost Oath's advertising revenue, people familiar with
those discussions had said.
Mr. Armstrong, who joined AOL in 2009, went to Verizon in 2015
when it acquired AOL. He was named Oath's CEO in 2017 and helped
steer its purchase of Yahoo. He had tried to combine the two
internet companies to challenge Google and Facebook Inc. in digital
advertising.
But those efforts so far have failed to generate much growth or
make Oath more than a side note in the wireless giant's earnings.
Oath contributed less than $4 billion in revenue during the first
half of the year, compared with the wireless business's $44
billion.
Verizon spent roughly $9 billion to buy AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in
2017. Owning two names synonymous with the early days of the
internet provided a path for Verizon to become a competitor in
media and advertising even though the companies represented less
than 5% of U.S. digital ad revenue.
The largest U.S. carrier by subscribers rolled the two brands
into one unit under Mr. Armstrong's leadership, saying it offered a
chance to marry data on more than 100 million wireless customers
with roughly one billion monthly online visitors to sites such as
HuffPost, TechCrunch and Yahoo Sports.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 12, 2018 16:16 ET (20:16 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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