Will Verizon snap up Yahoo’s web assets — and what might that look like? We don’t have an answer just yet, but there’s one person who might have some ideas about what it would look like: Aol CEO Tim Armstrong, who will be joining us at Disrupt NY in May this year.
And naturally, it’s around the time to start asking again what Aol looks like under Verizon.
Armstrong’s been with Aol since 2009 when he joined to be CEO and chairman of the company. He was at Google before that, and he’s been a big player in Aol’s focus on video and advertising technology. He then turned around and sold the company for $4.4 billion to Verizon. Aol’s the owner of an empire of content, overseeing brands like Engadget, The Huffington post and, yes, TechCrunch.
Video’s a big part of Aol’s future. And there have been a lot of developments in mobile video, most recently with Facebook unveiling live video streaming (and a video of an exploding watermelon promptly hitting nearly a million concurrent viewers). And there are other players like Twitter and Snapchat that are huge when it comes to video. These platforms are making big pushes into live video — so there’s also the question as to whether Aol plans to jump in as well.
And then there’s the advertising side, which Aol is making big pushes into with moves like its acquisition of Millennial Media. But as more and more attention shifts to the big platforms, so too has a huge chunk of the advertising dollars. Mobile advertising looks a lot different in 2016, and we’ll hear a bit about Aol’s strategy as the year goes on.
We’ll be talking a bit about the future of video and advertising alongside the rest of all that, and Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson will be joining Armstrong on stage during the discussion. Wilson’s got a lot of experience when it comes to tech in general, so we’ll be picking his brain along with Armstrong’s to find out more about video, Aol’s strategy — and maybe why Yahoo might be a good fit for Verizon.
Armstrong said in Disrupt London that Aol is focusing on its core strategy for 2016, but now that 2016 is here, we’ll see if things have changed at all. We’ve got a lot to talk about in May with Armstrong, Wilson and the rest of our Disrupt NY speakers — so join us in Brooklyn this year. There’s still time to grab a ticket at early bird pricing.