. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >>> good friday morning, joining us this morning, dennis berman, business editor at "the t journal" at 30 rock. good morning, dennis. and kayla tausche here at post 9 with a lot to talk about with the dow trying to make up for lost ground. up to about 124 points on the first day of may. it's been a very rough week for social stocks as you probably know. here's a chart of linkedin, twitter and yelp down more than 20% on the week as they all reported earnings and it begs the question -- is social media overvalued? is it just that facebook is starting to dominate the competition? john that's a critical question that investors are wrestling with today. >> it is. it looks to me like this is as much as anything, the story of the rise of programmatic advertising. linkedin talked about it in the call last night. that while display advertising, traditional display was strong in 2014. in 2015 they've seen the surge in programmatic. what's that? it's more computer-based, market-based advertising. a combination of real-time pricing and also computers making decisions, not just about l

and dennis berman, "wall street journal" business editor. gentlemen, good to see you. porter, let me go to you first. how will this help verizon with its competitors? it has t-mobile and sprint really nipping at its heels. how will aol help them? >> not only nipping at their heels, verizon actually lost subscriber, mobile sub desires in the first quarter to the gain of t-mobile and sprint. so what this does is two things. most importantly it gives verizon a double, dual revenue stream. it gets advertising on to the mobile. mobile advertise something growing 25 to 30% a year. and, verizon gets none of that. now with aol they will capture a huge volume of advertising that not just on their mobiles but on sprint's and t-mobile's as well. >> this is obviously a smart deal for verizon. >> very smart. liz: was this, sort of, aol was looking for some lifeline to come over the cliff to help them? >> tim armstrong is an ad salesman. he was in charge of advertising at google before he came to aol. this is the first guy verizon ever had that understands the real value of advertis

joining us, dennis berman, business editor at "the wall street journal." jon fortt live at a spotify event in new york city, he should have some headlines for us in a moment. kayla tausche back home at post 9, good to have you back. first up, we could see the apple watch in stores very soon. according to 9 to 5 mac during his trip to china, ceo tim cook promised the apple stores will start carrying the watch by june. since its launch the apple watch has been sold exclusively online. and tim cook confirmed the apple tore watch's launch will begin in china and he said the launch could not be going up any better. a busy man. >> of course the watch going great, he's got it on celebrities' arms, we're still talking about it i think the test comes when there's a true mass release of the watch. i would expect in the first few weeks, it will continue to be sold out and will continue to be a hot item. i think the jury will still be out, will this with a mass adoption product or a specialty product. i don't think we'll know until around christmas time. i still think

dennis hastert. >>> new severe storms pounding texas as rescuers sift through the rubble to find flood victims. welcome to "early start." i'm john berman. christine romans is off today. and happening now, the obama administration is fine tuning its isis strategy in iraq. pent goneagon officials are looking to bring sunni tribes into the fight. one possibly under consideration, the u.s. could arm sunni fighters directly. that would supplement the current system going through the shi'ite government in baghdad. this is happening as they are trying to exhume 499 bodies in tikrit which isis claim it is killed last year at a military base. iraqi officials and foreigners stayed in a hotel where bombs hit. we have our correspondent arwa damon with us. the idea of arming the sunnis directly is not without controversy. >> reporter: it is not. that's because of the ongoing secretarytarian issues here. they have yet to do that. then of course you have the various different dynamics of the battle field where you end up with more unconventional forces armed fighting alongside each other in the battle against isis. at the end of the day, this is iraq