Oath Will Be A $10B Asset By 2020; Evidon Sold For $50M

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Oh No TT

Oath, the combined AOL-Yahoo entity under Verizon, will be a $10 billion asset for the parent company by 2020, said VP and CFO Matthew D. Ellis on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Thursday. “Nothing that’s happened since we closed has changed our view on that,” he told investors. While it’s too early for Verizon to start predicting the growth outlook for its new media biz, Ellis said the combined entity reaches 1 billion consumers and represents $7 billion in annual revenue. In other Verizon news, while FiOS Internet added 49,000 consumers, FiOS Video lost 15,000 subscribers “due to softer secular demand for traditional linear video, given growth in the over-the-top offerings, as well as competitive promotional activity,” Ellis said. Read the release.

Evidonly, It’s Worth $50M

When Ghostery sold off its consumer-facing ad tracker earlier this year to Cliqz, that left Evidon, which focused on B2B governance [AdExchanger coverage], as its own entity. But now, Evidon has found its own home – sold to CrownPeak for a surprisingly high $50 million, according to MediaPost. “Evidon is one of the companies that licenses the Digital Advertising Alliance’s AdChoices icon – the centerpiece of the industry’s self-regulatory privacy program,” writes Wendy Davis, who notes that’s about 45% of Evidon’s enterprise biz. More.

This Is Failing?

The New York Times’ digital advertising revenue grew more than enough to offset print declines, the company shared during its Q2 earnings call Thursday. Advertising overall grew 1%. Within digital, the company saw growth in programmatic and smartphone advertising. But the publisher also shows it’s making the transition to become less reliant on advertising revenue. Subscriptions contributed $250 million in revenue during the quarter, compared to $132 million from advertising. And the Times passed 2 million digital subscriptions, double what it had two years ago – though a post-election bump seems to have tailed off. Read on.

The Boogie Man

Amazon’s market cap cleared $500 billion on Thursday. For a sense of scale, Walmart is a $240 billion company and, combined with Costco, Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s, still wouldn’t come close. That’s an intimidating incumbent, but Amazon’s specter has proven a boon to some category rivals. Criteo is leveraging existential Amazon dread to sell retailers and brands on the idea of a retargeting platform that combines website and app tags, CRM data, transactions, email lists and direct marketing arrangements like in-store signage, writes Lara O’Reilly at The Wall Street Journal. More.

Taste Of Success

If BuzzFeed’s original killer move was to turn cat listicles into enough cash to support high-growth reporting, the new media star is recipe videos. BuzzFeed’s Tasty food video studio is two years old, “but by several measures it is now producing some of the most popular digital content in the world,” writes Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times. And Tasty is also paying off through a series of ecommerce spinouts, like cookbooks, kitchen gear and a $149 Bluetooth-enabled hot plate going on sale over the holidays. More.

But Wait, There’s More!