The promise of owning content to deliver ads fueled by mobile subscriber data was a powerful lure driving Verizon to acquire two of the web’s oldest and best-known media brands.
But despite CEO Hans Vestberg’s eventual disinterest in holding onto the legacy properties of AOL and Yahoo — culminating in the telecom company’s sale of Verizon Media to Apollo Global Management announced earlier this week — digital ad industry execs say regulatory pressures, tech industry privacy moves and internal restrictions on data sharing contributed to Verizon’s decision to unload its media and ad tech properties, including its ad tech stack and identity tech product, ConnectID.