Why Verizon’s Oath Could Miss Its $10 Billion Annual Revenue Goal

Verizon’s (VZ) Oath media unit posted a revenue fall of ~6.9% YoY (year-over-year) to $1.8 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30, which represents ~5.5% of Verizon’s consolidated third-quarter revenue. AT&T’s (T) WarnerMedia division accounted for ~17.9% of its parent company’s total revenue in the third quarter.

At the same time, Oath dropped its target to generate $10 billion in annual revenue by 2020, as the unit is struggling with weakness in its search and desktop products, which account for most of its revenue. Oath consists of Yahoo and AOL assets, which Verizon acquired for a total of ~$9 billion.

Oath is competing with Facebook (FB) and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google for digital media advertising dollars. As per eMarketer estimates, Facebook and Google are expected to capture 20.6% and 37.1%, respectively, of total digital ad spending in the United States in 2018. Oath and Amazon (AMZN) are expected to pick up 3.3% and 4.2%, respectively, of digital ad expenditures in the country.