Verizon, Samsung Partner To Bring Oath Content To Samsung Devices

Verizon Communications’ Oath Inc. subsidiary has signed a deal to place four of its most popular apps on millions of Samsung devices across the United States.

Through the new deal, Oath’s Newsroom app, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance and Go90 mobile video apps will be pre-populated on Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and S+ devices. The plan is for the partnership to eventually extend outside the country.

It’s part of an effort to get Oath’s content and partners’ ads in front of the growing number of people watching shows on mobile devices, Oath’s chief executive officer, Tim Armstrong, told Reuters.

“The amount of content consumption on phones is continuing to skyrocket, and I think brands and consumers want more high-quality content,” he said.

While the number of viewers who watch videos on smartphones is expected to jump 8 percent by 2020 to 196.4 million, the number of TV watchers is expected to decrease more than half a percentage point to 295.9 million over the same period.

Advertisers will be able to place “native ads,” or advertisements that blend in with the content where they appear, within Oath’s apps on Samsung’s Galaxy.

“This gets ads one step closer to being direct to consumer,” Armstrong said. “You can’t be more direct than being on the mobile phone home screen and app environment.”

Samsung and Oath will share ad revenue. Armstrong refused to disclose the exact terms of the deal.

Last year, after Verizon acquired Yahoo and merged it with AOL, it then gave the newly created division a new name: Oath.

The company plans to announce its deal with Samsung during its presentation to media buyers in New York this week.

Just last week, Samsung posted its best operating profit ever in its first-quarter 2018 earnings results, which it largely credited to a 43 percent year-over-year sales increase in its memory chip segment and higher sales of its prime smartphones, including the Galaxy S9.