Verizon, on the heels of announcing a plan to reduce its workforce by more than 10,000 people to clear room for its 5G wireless plans, said it would record a $4.5 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge at its Oath unit, the home to former internet stalwarts AOL and Yahoo.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Verizon said the Oath unit has experienced pressures in 2018 that have resulted in lower than expected revenue and earnings performance.

“These pressures are expected to continue and have resulted in a loss of market positioning to our competitors in the digital advertising business,” Verizon said in the filing. “Oath has also achieved lower than expected benefits from the integration of the Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc. businesses”

Verizon added that during its normal budgeting process, it formed a new five-year plan for the Oath unit that resulted in “unfavorable adjustments to Oath’s financial projections.” Therefore, the company deemed it necessary to record a goodwill impairment charge of $4.6 billion ($4.5 billion after-tax) in Q4. Prior to the writedown, Oath had a goodwill balance of about $4.8 billion, according to the filing.

According to Verizon, Oath had revenue of about $5.6 billion in the first nine months of this year, roughly one-tenth of the $97 billion the telco generated overall. In October during its Q3 conference call with analysts, Verizon said Oath would likely miss its target of $10 billion in total revenue by 2020. 

Verizon purchased dial-up pioneer AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion and plunked down another $4.5 billion for Yahoo in 2017 with the hopes of parlaying the well-known yet dated brands into success in the digital arena. The Yahoo purchase was delayed for months after a data breach at the search engine lowered the sale price by about $350 million. 

Related: Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know Verizon Will Own After the AOL Deal Closes 

In April 2017, Verizon combined the two units in a new division dubbed Oath and tapped AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to head the unit. After some initial enthusiasm, Oath stumbled as more swift internet video providers took market share. Armstrong, who joined Verizon from Google shortly after it purchased AOL, left Oath in September. The unit is now headed by K. Guru Gowrappan, who joined the company in April after stints at Yahoo and Alibaba Group. 

Verizon-owned digital content unit Oath announced a deal to put Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Huffpost and Makers on the Roku Channel.

The Oath-branded programming verticals will be part of the Roku Channel’s live news offering, which provides live and linear content, in time for the Nov. 6 elections

For example, Yahoo News election night coverage will feature original reporting, analysis and immediate results coverage, anchored by correspondent Stephanie Sy and national political columnist Matt Bai. They’ll be joined throughout the night by Yahoo News and HuffPost journalists, including Yahoo News editor in chief Daniel Klaidman and HuffPost editor in chief Lydia Polgreen.

The growth of the Roku Channel, which is now available out of platform over the internet, has coincided with the emergence of Roku’s advertising business, which now produces more revenue for the company than streaming device sales.

“News is one of the most popular categories in The Roku Channel,” said Rob Holmes, VP of programming and engagement at Roku, in a statement. “Oath’s news and entertainment properties are proven to be a trusted and high-quality source for consumers. We’re always looking for ways to give our customers access to more voices and adding Yahoo to The Roku Channel accomplishes that.”

“As we continue to expand our live programming, Roku users will be able to tap into a wide range of insightful and entertaining video content, engaging our audiences across our best in class content including news, finance, sports and women’s leadership,” added Joanna Lambert, general manager of finance and tech for Oath. 

Veteran digital content and advertising executive Tim Armstrong will depart as head of Verizon’s Oath digital media business in the next few weeks, as the wireless giant continues to pivot away from the content business.

The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and later confirmed by Verizon.

Armstrong led AOL’s advertising and content business from 2009-2015, when AOL was acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion. At Verizon, he attempted to build a digital advertising business comparable to Facebook and another of his previous employers, Google, spearheading Verizon’s $4.8 billion purchase of Yahoo in 2016. The unit housing Verizon’s digital advertising efforts sought to promote media brands like HuffPost, TechCrunch and Yahoo Sports to Verizon’s 116 million wireless subscribers. But only a fraction of those users, 10 million, have opted into “Verizon Selects,” the program that enables the company to know enough about users to deliver them targeted advertising.

The division’s struggles were highlighted over the spring, when Verizon finally gave up on mobile-first content platform go90, which struggled mightily despite ample promotion. Verizon took a $900 million hit to its balance sheet in the second quarter following that shuttering.

Further, Verizon has changed course on its perspective on the content business, prioritizing 5G connectivity infrastructure. Over the summer, Lowell McAdam announced his pending retirement, with former Ericsson CEO Han Vestberg—currently serving as CTO of Verizon—taking over as Verizon chief executive on August 1.

Over the summer, according to WSJ, Armstrong reportedly informed senior Oath leaders that he was handing day-to-day oversight of Oath to former Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. executive K. Guru Gowrappan, who joined Oath over the spring.

Also reported to be departing Oath are Vanessa Witteman, the division’s head of finance, and Natalie Ravitz, its communications chief. 

Oath, the Verizon unit that contains Yahoo and AOL, said it has applied greater focus on delivering addressable, targeted advertising to the Fios TV footprint.

That move follows a decision to shut down ONE TV, a programmatic TV offering that originated with AOL and tied in AOL’s 2013 acquisition of Adap.tv.

AOL Becomes ‘ONE’ With Programmatic Advertising

“The Fios household addressable offering represents what we believe to be the future of television,” Brett Hurwitz, business lead, advanced TV at Oath, said. “Today’s TV’s ecosystem is changing and the pace of that change is only going to accelerate.”

While digital programmatic advertising has added targeting and accountability, bringing that model will have a greater impact, he said.

RELATED: Oath Announces 10 New Video Series at NewFront

He said One TV was a “great product” for the clients that used it (they could essentially self-serve and buy against their targets online), but said it likewise made sense to shift more focus to Fios’s TV footprint of about 4.6 million homes as the future of TV moves from a model of one to many, to one-to-one.

The Fios TV addressable offering was launched in the fall of 2016 and initially ran in parallel with One TV (Oath has retained the intellectual property for One TV and could still use it for future endeavors). 

Hurwitz said the move also makes sense as advertisers use a portion of their linear TV budget to buy household addressable campaigns and use that data for their larger linear TV ad buying spend.

There’s a logical progression with household addressable approaches that allow marketers to use that same targeting data and measurement data for their OTT-connected campaigns and for the results of TV-based campaigns to complement and fuel their “lower funnel” digital activity.

Hurwitz also stressed that this isn’t about selling remnant inventory, but focused on premium properties offered on Fios TV that have been enabled for this level of sophisticated household addressability.

“The exciting thing for us is this change in television is really here,” he said. 

Verizon has been adamant that the OTT TV service it was developing would not be a “me-too” amid a growing sea of virtual MVPDs.

RELATED: Verizon Exec: Our New OTT TV Service Won’t Be a ‘Me-Too’

Mission accomplished (sort of) -- Verizon’s OTT TV service won’t be a me-too because it has also turned into a “never was.”

Realizing that creating something that is truly differentiated and given the general decline of “linear” TV, Verizon has shifted gears and decided it would rather partner up with an existing OTT TV player and try to create something a bit different by integrating digital content from Oath, the unit that runs Yahoo and AOL.

“Our view is that we should partner with those that are in the linear game,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said earlier this week in this video interview with Yahoo Finance. “Let them be very good at what they do. We’ll add digital content into that mix, and we’ll position ourselves for where we become more of an over-the-top video culture versus the linear model that we have today.”

McAdam stressed that Verizon likewise won’t be investing more deeply into the linear TV arena, and saying he doesn’t believe that traditional TV has a bright future would be an understatement.

“I think the linear model is dead; it’s just going to take a long time to die,” he said.

“We’re much more into the digital area,” McAdam said, noting that Verizon will instead place its bets on things like Yahoo’s properties and some “limited entertainment.”

Back to that idea that Verizon wants to integrate Oath’s content with an OTT TV provider, McAdam said he expects to have a partner picked for an expected launch in Q4.

He didn’t say who Verizon will partner with, but he has ample choices. Two seemingly unlikely candidates (because: mobile competition) are AT&T’s DirecTV Now service and the one that T-Mobile is developing following its acquisition of Layer3 TV.

RELATED: T-Mobile’s Jeff Binder: 5G Is ‘Perfect Delivery Mechanism for Video’ 

Those that might make a better fit from a direct competitor standpoint include YouTube TV, fuboTV, Sony PlayStation Vue, Philo, Sling TV and, possibly, Hulu.

The good news for McAdam and Verizon is that some of these virtual MVPDs have already been starting to stitch digital content with traditional TV.

RELATED: Cheddar Launches on YouTube TV, Debuts New Channel

That Verizon has altered its stance on creating its own OTT TV service isn’t a huge surprise, given that there’s already talk of a looming shakeout of the current market. Plus, OTT TV, with its mélange of smaller margins, programming costs, and exposure to churn, is simply a tough business to break even on, let alone profit from.

RELATED: Virtual Pay TV Market Set for a Shakeout: Analyst

CenturyLink tried its hand at an OTT TV service, found that business to be challenging, shut it down, and decided that partnering is the better approach. It’s also starting to back away from its managed IPTV service, Prism TV.

RELATED: CenturyLink Pulling Plug on OTT TV Beta Service

Oath, a unit of Verizon that operates Yahoo and AOL, has appointed two execs to its global sales organization -- Kathryn Friedrich as chief business officer, RYOT Studio; and Karen Schmidt as VP, head of B2B field marketing.

RELATED: Oath Hires New CFO

Friedrich and Schmidt report to John DeVine, Oath’s chief revenue officer.

Friedrich will head up the global growth of RYOT Studio, which currently has a presence in 14 countries across five continents. She most recently was chief marketing and revenue officer at Thrive Global, working with Arianna Huffington. Prior to that, she was head of global content monetization at YouTube, and has held other exec roles at Google, Hearst, Conde Nast, American Express Publishing, and KPMG.

RELATED: New Math: AOL + Verizon = Oath

Schmidt will spearhead go-to-market strategy for its advertising products. She joins Oath from American Express, where she most recently was VP, global head of sales enablement for the company’s Global Commercial Services division. She began her career as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Kathryn and Karen to Oath as we bring together the best mobile experiences, trusted data that performs, and market-leading ad tech to serve our advertiser and publisher partners,” DeVine said in a statement.

Oath, a unit of Verizon that runs Yahoo and AOL, has hired Vanessa Wittman ac CFO, charged with leading the unit through its “next phase of growth.”

RELATED: New Math: AOL + Verizon = Oath

Wittman, who will report to Oath CEO Tim Armstrong, has previously been CFO at Dropbox, Motorola and March & McLennan.

Former Oath CFO Holly Hess is moving to a newly created role at Verizon, where she will lead Verizon’s previously announced $10 billion cost savings initiative, and report to Verizon CFO Matt Ellis.

“Vanessa is an exceptional leader with singular experience, and she will be a great partner to help drive Oath's vision, strategy, and operations to reach our long term goals,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Vanessa joins Oath at an exciting point in our journey to build a differentiated company creating the future of mobile and the internet in combination with Verizon. I want to thank Holly Hess for being a founding force at Oath, as well as a driver behind the original Verizon and AOL deal. She made significant contributions to Oath and we look forward to continued collaboration with Holly in her new role at Verizon.”

Communications companies continue to up the ante on help for Hurricane Harvey-related areas.

Verizon said late Tuesday (Aug. 29) that it was pledging $10 million to fund relief efforts through four non-profit organizations to meet short- and long-term needs.

Related: Verizon Offers Communications Help to Harvey-Affected Customers

In addition, the company is:

"Relieving postpaid customers of data, talk and text charges and giving prepaid customers an extra 3 GB to be used for data, talk and text from Aug. 26 through September 15.  The September 15 date reflects a one-week extension to what was previously announced.

"Deploying mobile equipment including Cells on Wheels (COWs), and Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS) to supplement service in areas of South Texas that need extra network capacity. Verizon has staged additional equipment and is prepared for rapid deployment as needed in hard-hit areas. This initiative is part of a network investment of nearly $1 billion in 2016 in the state of Texas.

"Working closely with several federal and local government agencies to help support first responders on the ground with much needed communications services.

"Staffing shelters with Verizon employees in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio to assist first responders and displaced residents with mobile charging, internet access and other communications needs.

"Along with its subsidiary Oath, the company is providing financial support to residents of Houston and South Texas with dollar-for-dollar matches of employees’ contributions to select relief-focused organizations. Oath also will match consumers’ contributions to select relief-focused organizations when they donate after visiting one of Oath’s web properties. More information can be found at https://yahoo.benevity.org/community.

"Offering emergency financial assistance to employees who have been affected by this tragedy though both its employee assistance program and its VtoV program where employees can donate funds to help fellow employees affected by a natural or personal disaster. In addition, to reinforce our long- term commitment to the communities we serve, Verizon will be offering it’s more than 10,000 employees who work in the states of Texas and Louisiana the opportunity to volunteer for the Harvey recovery effort over the coming months and receive up to a weeks vacation for their time."

Other cable and telecom companies assisting with relief efforts via services and donations include Altice USA, Comcast-NBCU, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Oath will be the new brand name of a unit of Verizon that will combine AOL with Yahoo, Business Insider first reported Monday.

Tim Armstrong, AOL’s CEO, soon followed by confirming word of the coming brand change, including the new logo, via Twitter, while also noting that more details will be revealed this summer:

Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017. pic.twitter.com/tM3Ac1Wi36

— Tim Armstrong (@timarmstrongaol) April 3, 2017

Verizon originally agreed topurchase Yahoo’s Internet business last July for $4.83 billion, but the price on the pending deal was recently reduced by $350 million amid high-profile data breaches at Yahoo.

RELATED: Verizon, Yahoo Agree to Slash Merger Price by $350M

Verizon last week announced a new corporate structure ahead of the closing of the proposed Yahoo deal. Among the moves, Marni Walden was named EVP for Media and Telematics, a unit that will include the AOL and Yahoo assets.