Verizon ditched its Oath media brand shortly after slashing its valuation of the business due to competitive and market pressures in the digital space.

Guru Gowrappan, who leads the business, said the shift to Verizon Media Group represents its “strong alignment as a core pillar of Verizon’s business”. It adopted the Oath moniker in April 2017, following its acquisition of media assets from AOL and Yahoo.

Last week Verizon cut its valuation of Oath from $4.8 billion to just $200 million, stating that headwinds seen so far are expected to continue as it competes for digital advertising dollars with industry giants.

It has also sold off its stake in media venture AwesomenessTV, and shut its go90 mobile video app as it reduced its content creation activities.

In a blog post, Gowrappan glossed over the various negatives, arguing the company had established the “building blocks of how we will continue to evolve our member-centric ecosystem with much more to come”.

Recent developments include the launch of a new Yahoo app, which it said “provides the best of Yahoo in one place for a cohesive, seamless experience”; grew off-network distribution of Yahoo content with partners including Apple TV, Roku, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn; launched the Huffpost Life lifestyle content channel; and repositioned Tumblr to provide “a safe place for communities of all kinds to thrive”.

It also highlighted links with Verizon to work on XR, artificial intelligence, machine learning, mobile edge computing, 5G and other technologies.

Gowrappan took up the reins at Oath earlier this year following the departure of Tim Armstrong, who joined Verizon following the AOL acquisition. Gowrappan joined Oath in April 2018 as president and COO, having previously been global managing director at Alibaba.