Verizon, AOL and Advertising

The Verizon-AOL deal could have implications across the digital-advertising industry. Verizon has the ability to identify users as they move between desktop and mobile devices. That data could solve one of the biggest problems plaguing digital advertising companies, which, due to poor functionality of cookies on mobile devices, have difficulty getting their targeting to work outside of desktop. Verizon is already dipping its toes into ad-tech in an attempt to put this data to use. Last year, it launched PrecisionID, a cookie alternative that works across screens, with a limited group of partners. AOL, for its part, has a powerful bundle of ad-tech software that is used to buy ads across the web.

If Verizon creates a single identifier and grants exclusivity to AOL's ad-tech platform, the result could be valuable for advertisers and lucrative for the combined entity. The only other big player with a solid solution to tie user identity across devices is Facebook. Rich in login data, the company relaunched the Atlas ad server in September to take on this problem. AOL introduced technology to address the issue last October, but it's not as accurate as Facebook's.