Telecom giant Verizon has had internal talks about acquiring or forming a joint venture with AOL, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
The acquisition is said to be focused around AOL’s advertising technology and its video content, in an effort to combat AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV.
It doesn’t really sound like Verizon cares about AOL’s web properties – like Aol.com, Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch – it’s focused on the technology that could be helpful in its telecom business.
This is where a joint venture would come in, if an acquisition was taken off the table. Verizon still has a lot of debt from its acquisition of 45 percent of the Verizon Wireless brand from Vodafone in 2014.
Verizon hasn’t made a formal proposal to AOL, and no agreement is imminent, Bloomberg reports. However, the notion has been tossed around internally. Verizon is dedicating three executives to help develop a mobile-video service and integrate acquired technology, known as OnCue, from Intel. AOL’s ad expertise could really help.
According to Bloomberg, the programmatic ads that AOL has could be paired with a future online-video product.
AOL has been winding down its dial-up business. Therefore, Verizon could capitalize and convert some AOL dial-up customers to its FIOS network for in home broadband.