by Stacey Higginbotham Fortune
But it is bad for business.
Verizon is planning to follow in AT&T's footsteps with its own plan to let advertisers pay the carrier for the mobile data consumers use when watching certain content. This plan, which AT&T introduced back in 2014, might let a company like Hershey's pay to let a consumer watch a mobile video ad for the chocolate without having that ad count against the consumer's mobile data cap. In fact, at one time, Hershey's was an actual client (using a third-party provider) of AT&T's sponsored data plan for that exact reason.
In general, the media and open Internet fans hate this plan. The idea that consumers already pay Verizon for mobile data, and that Verizon might also get to charge advertisers another fee for the same bits infuriates them. Some hate the idea of this because carriers are double-dipping on revenue.