AT&T and Verizon both want to run massive ad-tracking networks to rival Facebook

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke at the Code Conference today, where he took issue with the government’s antitrust lawsuit blocking its purchase of Time Warner. Then he laid out exactly why he wants to buy it: to sell ads to the customers it already tracks.[Time Warner’s] Turner has an amazing inventory of advertising that they just kind of sell broadly. It’s not a very targeted advertising approach. AT&T has an amazing amount of data — customer data for 40 mill