Why Verizon’s Oath Dropped Its $10 Billion Revenue Goal

Verizon’s (VZ) Oath subsidiary no longer expects to meet its revenue goal of $10 billion by 2020. Last year, Verizon outlined a growth plan that included reaching 2.0 billion users across its various media brands and generating $10 billion–$20 billion in annual revenue by 2020.

The reason Oath’s revenue target now looks unattainable is that the unit is struggling with weakness in its search and desktop product categories, which account for most of Oath’s revenue.

Oath’s revenue fell 6.9% year-over-year to $1.8 billion in the third quarter, representing 5.5% of Verizon’s total third-quarter revenue. Oath is a leading digital advertising provider in the United States, according to eMarketer. It is expected to capture 3.0% of digital ad spending in the United States this year, while Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB), and Google (GOOGL) are expected to pick up 4.0%, 4.2%, 20.6%, and 37.1%, respectively.

Verizon created Oath mostly from AOL and Yahoo assets it acquired for a total of ~$10 billion. The integration of assets, which Verizon says is still ongoing, could allow the Oath team to focus more on driving growth. Verizon expects the integration to be completed by the end of this year. Oath will operate under a new business group next year, Verizon Media Group.