Verizon will spend $4.4B in cash to purchase AOL and its burgeoning video advertising business and programmatic ad technology practice.

The telco says the deal further "drives its LTE wireless video and OTT (over-the-top video) strategy."

Lowell McAdam, Verizon CEO, said in a statement the company's vision "is to provide customers with a premium digital experience based on a global multiscreen network platform."

This acquisition supports Verizon's goal to provide a cross-screen connection to consumers, creators and advertisers.

Tim Armstrong, AOL's chief, said in a staff memo, "The deal will give our content businesses more distribution and it will give our advertisers more distribution and mobile-first features. The deal will add scale and it will add a mobile lens to everything we do inside of our content, video, and ads strategy."

AOL’s global content brands include The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, MAKERS and AOL.com.

Armstrong, who will continue to oversee AOL, said the content group will benefit from more distribution and enable advertisers more mobile-first features.

AOL still gets $182M in annual revenues from dial-up customers.