Yahoo unveils a new ‘Agentic AI’ layer within its DSP platform at CES, enabling advertisers to integrate custom AI models, automate workflows, and enhance campaign efficiency while maintaining transparency and control amid industry shifts towards privacy and interoperability.
Today at CES, Yahoo DSP unveiled what it describes as an “Agentic AI” intelligence layer embedded across its demand‑side platform, a move the company says will reshape how adverti...
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sers plan, activate, optimise and measure programmatic campaigns.
According to the announcement by Yahoo, the offering centres on a “Yours, Mine, and Ours” framework that allows advertisers to plug in their own AI models, use Yahoo DSP native agents, or connect both via secure Model Context Protocols (MCP) or APIs. The company said the approach is intended to combine proprietary advertiser tools with platform intelligence while preserving “transparency, governance, and control at enterprise scale.”
“Agentic AI changes how media buying actually gets done,” Adam Roodman, GM, Yahoo DSP, said at CES. “By building it directly into Yahoo DSP and allowing advertisers to connect their own AI alongside ours, we’re giving teams a faster, more flexible way to plan, optimise, and act, without sacrificing transparency or control.”
Yahoo says the initial global rollout is available today across key markets including Canada, the UK, Australia and Singapore, with a roadmap of additional agentic capabilities , covering optimisation, QA and advanced measurement agents , due through 2026. The platform surfaces always‑on agents that can “continually learn, diagnose, and recommend,” and, with human approval, execute actions inside the interface. Yahoo frames the agents across five categories: Insight, Traffic, Optimise, Improve and Measure.
The company highlighted several live use cases. Under the “Yours” activation, advertisers and partners can use MCP to connect external agents for tasks such as campaign trafficking and programmatic guaranteed buys; Yahoo pointed to a trafficking agent built by Newton and RPA as an example. “By applying agentic AI to programmatic media workflows, RPA is removing operational barriers, enabling our teams to focus their human expertise on diversifying and maximising marketplace partnerships in service of our clients’ business outcomes,” Lisa Herdman, SVP, executive director video investment & marketplace intelligence at RPA, said in Yahoo’s materials.
A “Troubleshooting” agent, described as “always‑on,” diagnoses pacing and delivery problems and can recommend or, with approval, execute fixes. An “Audience Exploration” capability exposes Yahoo DSP audience metadata through APIs or MCP so external agents can analyse segment sizes, demographics and pricing to recommend relevant audiences. “Built‑in agents speed up tasks like diagnosing under‑delivery or building audiences, from hours to seconds,” John Goulding, Global Chief Strategy Officer at MIQ, said in comment supplied with the announcement.
Industry and partner integrations announced alongside the agentic AI build out point to a wider push towards privacy‑centric, interoperable solutions. Yahoo has expanded its targeting toolkit through an integration of Comscore’s AI‑driven, ID‑free audience solution, enabling advertisers to activate privacy‑focused audiences across desktop, mobile and connected TV without relying on traditional identifiers or third‑party cookies. According to Comscore and Yahoo statements, advertisers using the ID‑free audiences have reported improved efficiency metrics such as lower CPMs and higher CTRs.
Yahoo also announced partnerships intended to smooth TV buying and identity resolution: a first‑of‑its‑kind DSP relationship with Roku Exchange and Roku Data Cloud was unveiled at CES, which Yahoo said will simplify access to Roku’s CTV supply and audiences. Separately, Narrative I/O said it is partnering with Yahoo DSP to enable activation of first‑party data and to help data providers monetise and match datasets with Yahoo ConnectID in an omnichannel, privacy‑centric manner.
Technical documentation from Yahoo indicates the company is pursuing a hybrid, developer‑friendly approach. According to the Yahoo DSP API documentation, developers will be able to access MCP servers directly and use enhanced API connections to support agentic operations across planning, activation, reporting and custom workflows, with the company encouraging partners and technical stakeholders to engage on API specifications.
The combined announcements position Yahoo DSP as pushing on three fronts: embedding agentic automation inside the buy workflow, enabling interoperable AI‑to‑AI connections via MCP and APIs, and layering privacy‑first audience and identity solutions across channels. Yahoo framed the aim as removing repetitive, operational tasks so human teams can prioritise strategy, and said the agentic roadmap will expand hybrid agents and deeper integrations over the coming months and through 2026.
Industry partners quoted by Yahoo welcomed the potential efficiency gains but framed the development as part of a broader industry shift toward interoperable, privacy‑conscious tooling. The company’s communications materials emphasise control and governance for enterprise advertisers; the claims about performance improvements and operational efficiencies are presented as partner examples and vendor statements rather than independently verified results.
As Yahoo scales its agentic features and new partner integrations, the platform’s evolution will be watched for how well it balances automation with transparency and for the measurable impact on campaign outcomes as third‑party identifiers continue to wane.
Source: Noah Wire Services
