I just finished reading a fascinating article on Linked In (Here) about the acquisition of AOL by Verizon.
I honestly thought it was a seriously crazy idea, but the article laid out a valid argument of why the merger was critical. Essentially, Verizon has just “leapfrogged” Google in terms of Ad serving technology, controlling virtually all aspects of content distribution (TV/Net/ and e-print). Google is trying to roll out its Google Fiber service soon, but now it is playing catch-up at the TV/internet service distribution level.
This leaves only one player in the market without some sort of ad distribution system. Comcast. My bet is that they make a play for Yahoo! in the next coming months.
While all of this consolidation sounds fairly daunting, from a small businesses perspective that depend on internet ad traffic, this will be a boon. There will finally be a competitor for Google to even out the market and lessen the massive reporting demands imposed on small businesses by a sole ad network provider.
