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Verizon Communications
Inc.
VZ 0.44%
Oath's CEO, Tim Armstrong, will leave the media and advertising sector at the end of the year and has appointed K. Guru Gowrappan as the Branch's General Manager.
Gowrappan will become chief executive on Oct. 1, Verizon said Wednesday. He is President and Chief Operating Officer of Oath since April. L & # 39; former
Alibaba Group
the executive will report to Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.
Mr. Armstrong, the founder of Oath, will help advise the management of Verizon's subsidiary in its transition efforts before leaving the company at the end of the year, said Verizon. He will report to Verizon President Lowell McAdam.
Gowrappan, who was Alibaba's chief executive, focused on the international development of consumer and enterprise products at China's e-commerce giant. Previously, he was Chief Operating Officer at Quixey, a mobile startup, and previously he was COO for growth and emerging initiatives at
Zynga
.
He has also held several management positions at
Yahoo
and Opening.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Armstrong was in talks to leave, according to people familiar with it.
The newspaper reported that Verizon and Oath executives disagreed over what some digital ad unit employees viewed as too conservative an approach to using wireless subscriber data to increase Oath's advertising revenue .
Mr. Armstrong, who joined AOL in 2009, went to Verizon in 2015 when he acquired AOL. He was named CEO of Oath in 2017 and helped drive his purchase of Yahoo. He had tried to combine the two Internet companies to challenge Google and
Facebook
Inc.
in digital advertising.
But so far, these efforts have failed to generate much growth or to make Oath more than a secondary note in the wireless giant's bottom line. Oath generated less than $ 4 billion in revenue in the first half, compared to $ 44 billion in the wireless sector.
Verizon spent about $ 9 billion to buy AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017. Owning two synonyms for the Internet has allowed Verizon to become a competitor in the media and advertising, even though companies accounted for less than 5 % the United States. digital advertising revenues.
The largest US subscriber operator has consolidated the two brands into one unit under the leadership of Mr. Armstrong, claiming that it offers the ability to marry data on more than 100 million wireless customers, with approximately $ 1 billion visitors online per month. Sports.
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