"Verizon hasn’t made a formal proposal to AOL, and no agreement is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private."
...or they see the business of folks not bothering to cancel their AOL dialup account as complementary to folks not bothering to cancel their landline POTS.
AOL has built up a formidable arsenal of video ad tech in recent years. Surely Verizon is more interested in that rather than whatever clicky content AOL is shipping these days.
I'm ignorant - explain how it's useful?
The cynical side of me thinks its useless without high quality video content, which AOL lacks. The greatest video ad tech sucks if you don't have the brand name sponsors, but those are only attracted to higher quality content.