Verizon to bring media franchises under Yahoo+ umbrella: Report

Verizon has big plans for its media division.

Yahoo will offer several subscriptions AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) (AP)

Verizon Media Group, the media division of Verizon, is going to rebrand most of its media franchises as Yahoo products and sell them through a subscription offering called Yahoo Plus, reports Axios.

"Yahoo is the future of our consumer-facing brand," says Joanna Lambert, Head of Consumer at Verizon Media is quoted as saying. 

The media division offers a number of Yahoo-related services such as Yahoo Fantasy and Yahoo Finance. According to the report, Verizon has 3 million subscribers paying for these services. Verizon had acquired Yahoo for $4.48 billion in 2017.

Verizon plans to move all the non-Yahoo brands to a universal Yahoo brand. For instance, it has already rebranded media studio RYOT as Yahoo Ryot Lab. Its women-focused brand Makers has been renamed Makers by Yahoo.

The company, however, has not yet renamed publications such as TechCrunch, AutoBlog and Engadget. Interestingly, TechCrunch in a post said that the publication will not be renamed as YahooCrunch or something on those lines.

“TechCrunch is a brand that, against all odds, has stood the test of time in a radically changing and challenging landscape. That's thanks to the bold idea of its founder as well as the tireless efforts of every member of the TC staff past and present who are all immensely talented, generous, multi-hyphenates that I have taken intense satisfaction from working with every day,” wrote TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino.

The Axios report further said that Verizon was planning to bring Plus versions of its services such as Yahoo Fantasy Plus, Yahoo Finance Plus, Yahoo Mail Plus, Yahoo Plus Protect. It is also experimenting with a service called Tastemakers, which gives users access to Yahoo subscription brand premium features such as investor reports.

"From a strategy perspective, we have enormous scale that is unlike most media companies in the world. The question becomes, 'how do we take that audience and drive them from being free users to subscribers of really valuable paid offerings?'"