networks. “Say you and your neigh-
bor are both DirecTV customers
and you’re watching the same live
program at the same time,” says
Brian Lesser, who oversees the
vast data-crunching operation that
supports this kind of advertising at
AT&T. “We can now dynamically
change the advertising. Maybe
your neighbor’s in the market for
a vacation, so they get a vacation
ad. You’re in the market for a car,
you get a car ad. If you’re watching
on your phone, and you’re not at
home, we can customize that and
maybe you get an ad specific to a
car retailer in that location.”
Such targeting has caused pri-
vacy headaches for Yahoo, Google,
and Facebook, of course. That’s
why AT&T requires that custom-
ers give permission for use of their
data; like those other companies, it
anonymizes that data and groups
it into audiences—for example,
consumers likely to be shopping for
a pickup truck—rather than target-
ing specific individuals. Regardless
of how you see a directed car ad,
say, AT&T can then use geolocation
data from your phone to see if you
went to a dealership and possibly
use data from the automaker to
see if you signed up for a test-
drive—and then tell the automaker,
“Here’s the specific ROI on that
advertising,” says Lesser. AT&T
claims marketers are paying four
times the usual rate for that kind
of advertising.
Combine all the elements that
Stephenson has assembled, and
“AT&T can no longer be called a
telecom company,” says Moffett.
Stephenson doesn’t object to the
characterization. He now calls
AT&T “a modern media company.”
F
OR MOST of his career,
Stephenson never
imagined he’d be doing
anything like any of this.
He was born in Oklahoma City and
started working for Southwestern
Bell Telephone in 1982, when he
was still in college. After getting
a master’s degree in accounting
at the University of Oklahoma in
1986, he became a fast-rising star
in finance jobs at Southwestern
Bell, at one point being posted to
Mexico City to oversee the com-
pany’s stake in Telmex, where he
worked closely with another big in-
vestor, eventual billionaire Carlos
Slim. In 2005, Southwestern Bell
(renamed SBC) bought AT&T,
the remnant left after the 1984
breakup. The combined companies
took the AT&T name, one of the
best known and most valuable in
America. Two years later, at age 47,
Stephenson became CEO.
Today he occupies an un-
derstated fourth-floor office in
AT&T’s high-rise in the heart of
old downtown Dallas, kitty-corner
from the 1912 Adolphus Hotel and
a block down from the original
Neiman Marcus store. Until
recently, he recalls, remaking the
media industry in the way he’s now
attempting to do was supposed to
be technologically impossible. “I re-
LORDS OF THE REALM:
Key Stephenson
lieutenants John
Stankey (left) and
John Donovan need
to execute the boss’s
strategy. Stankey
runs WarnerMedia.
Donovan oversees
phones and satellite
TV services.
STANKEY: JOHN LAM
PARSKI
—GET T Y IM
AGES; DONOVAN: NANCY NEW
BERRY
SMART
ROBOTS
ARE
NOT GOING
TO STEAL
OUR JOBS.
Y E T.
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