At A Glance
Yahoo DSP is building toward a “DSP as infrastructure” model that plugs into advertisers’ existing workflows, tools, and agents. In this Q&A, Yahoo DSP shares how Yahoo ConnectID, interoperability, and Yahoo Blueprint Performance support targeting and measurement across CTV, live sports, and the open web. The interview closes with practical activation plays using Experian Audiences in Yahoo DSP.
In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Jessica Rocco, a Business Development Senior Director at Yahoo DSP (demand-side platform), about the shift toward agentic workflows and identity-led performance.
How is Yahoo DSP shifting from a platform to infrastructure?
Yahoo DSP has been positioning itself as more of a data backbone than a destination UI. What are the most important integrations you’re building for, and what does ‘plug-in ready’ look like in practice for an advertiser?
We’re moving from DSPs as destinations to DSPs as infrastructure, as the industry shifts toward agentic workflows. This transformation is driven by data-led decisioning, greater standardization, with the ecosystem ready for it.
The last decade DSP competition has been primarily about UI features. That era is behind us. Today, differentiation comes from exclusivity, integrations, and interoperability. This means at Yahoo DSP we are thinking about where our partners and advertisers are and where they want to be. In practice, that may mean they never log into our UI at all.
Instead, Yahoo DSP becomes a flexible, plug-in-ready infrastructure that integrates directly into their workflows, tools, and agents. That’s why we’re building around two themes:
- Data: Yahoo DSP’s data can be made accessible through performance tools, transforming it into actionable insights that drive better outcomes for advertisers.
- Agentic AI: We see the opportunity to make a range of human and non-human activities more efficient, and we offer different paths based on the advertisers’ needs:
- Use our native agents in Yahoo DSP for better performance and faster execution.
- Combine our tools with external agents to unlock better decisioning and increased automation.
- Fully decouple the concept of UI and enable end-to-end workflows powered by your or your partners’ agents.
In summary, we’re building a flexible and interoperable environment where advertisers can bring their planning, buying, and measurement technologies and leverage the Yahoo data and tools to enable more efficient and higher-performing media buying.
Why does identity sit below the interface at Yahoo DSP?
When you say the advantage sits below the interface, what are the core identity building blocks today, and how are you measuring progress, authenticated reach, match rates, deduplication, or something else?
Yahoo DSP treats identity as the performance layer that runs through the full campaign lifecycle. At Yahoo DSP, the core building block of that advantage is Yahoo ConnectID. It’s always activated in Yahoo DSP and powers every step of the campaign lifecycle. Built on top of our Identity Graph and today reaches 213 million logged-in users in the U.S. and 345 million globally (Yahoo data Q1 2026).
The building blocks of our Identity Graph include:
The proof is in the numbers: 90% of Yahoo DSP spend runs on Yahoo ConnectID-enabled supply, reflecting the scale, trust, and performance that identity-driven activation delivers.
Why do CTV and live sports validate Yahoo DSP’s approach to identity?
Live sports are one of the toughest environments to get right on connected TV (CTV). Why is it a strong showcase for the Yahoo DSP identity approach, and can you share an example of impact you’ve seen on deduplicated reach or cost per unique household?
When it comes to live sports, the challenge is the scale of concurrent viewers. When an ad break occurs during a live sports event, our platform receives a spike of bid requests, which can cause buyers to exhaust their budgets too quickly, leaving valuable inventory unfilled later in the event.
We address this challenge with Yahoo Blueprint Performance, our enhanced AI-driven algorithm, which bids and paces more effectively, with 10x faster response times that consider the size of the spike and the advertiser’s remaining budget and flight (Internal Yahoo DSP data, Q4 2025). The result is not only more of the advertiser’s budget being spent during the event, but also a smoother distribution of impressions throughout the entire event.
Yahoo ConnectID is a key input into Yahoo Blueprint Performance. It enhances effectiveness by enforcing reliable frequency capping at the Household and/or user level, eliminating wasted impressions, improving media budget allocation, and ultimately driving better, more cohesive consumer experiences.
How should marketers activate commerce signals for intent with Yahoo DSP?
As shopper intent and transaction signals come in from commerce partners, what’s the recommended activation workflow, and where do those signals deliver the biggest lift alongside CTV and the open web?
Commerce signals have indeed brought new opportunities for advertisers. Commerce media networks are goldmines of deep audience insights such as consumer behavior, purchasing patterns, product preferences, and more. These addressable audiences offer a perfect opportunity for advertisers to activate effective campaigns. At Yahoo DSP we enable advertisers to activate data from all leading commerce data companies, from retail media networks to travel media networks and a wide range of complementary data partners.
The recommended activation for advertisers is to maximize the effect of these data signals by tying them to a strong identity. This ensures that they maximize their scale and reach consumers across devices and channels. That’s why in Yahoo DSP, Yahoo ConnectID is always on to ensure precision and scale.
Additionally, it’s important that data is being activated across channels, especially CTV. Combining commerce data with CTV enables advertisers to reach engaged audiences while delivering premium, relevant ad experiences. Today, CTV is increasingly influencing mid- and lower-funnel performance. At Yahoo DSP, we provide access to 100% non-walled garden CTV inventory, giving advertisers scaled reach beyond closed ecosystems and enabling consistent identity-based activation across the open web.
Finally, commerce media networks can maximize impact by leveraging solutions that enable them to use their data for measurement and optimization. For example, Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes (IFO) allows advertisers to tie programmatic media investments to sales – even on a SKU level – and in-store visits in near real time. Yahoo Blueprint Performance, our advanced AI model, uses this data for in-flight optimizations that drive results. For example, a leading retail network saw a 22% lift in ROAS when activating Yahoo IFO (Yahoo DSP Q1-Q2 2025).
What drives DSP selection/decision in buyer evaluations in 2026?
In competitive bake-offs, what’s pushing brands and agencies towards their choice of DSP right now: Identity, supply quality, measurement, service model, or economics? And what objections are you hearing most that you’ve had to address head-on?
Identity remains top of mind, as advertisers seek scaled, deterministic reach in a privacy-centric manner. Yahoo ConnectID provides that through the scale and quality of Yahoo data, built on hundreds of millions of authenticated users, enriched by interoperability with all leading data companies, such as Experian. Our foundation enables accurate targeting, holistic frequency management, and true omnichannel measurement, while delivering more cohesive ad experiences for consumers.
Second, supply quality and transparency are common concerns. Advertisers want assurance that they are accessing premium, brand-safe inventory and that their investments are working as intended. We address this through direct publisher relationships, curated supply paths, and transparent buying models that allow advertisers to make efficient, informed decisions.
Measurement is another challenge. Brands increasingly expect programmatic investments to prove impact against real business outcomes, not just media metrics. We meet this head-on with proprietary measurement solutions powered by Yahoo data, such as proprietary studies and Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes, complemented by partnerships with leading third-party vendors.
Our teams act as an extension of internal marketing teams, helping unlock smarter budget allocation and performance optimization. Ultimately, the connective tissue across identity, supply, measurement, and optimization is data. That’s why we continue to see programmatic investment consolidate around platforms that have scaled, high-quality first-party data. Strong 1P data is the backbone of effective programmatic, and we continue to see investment shift toward platforms that can offer it at scale and with quality, and Yahoo DSP remains top of mind for advertisers.
Finally, through our Agentic AI solutions, we increase team efficiency and minimize time spent on manual tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-value strategic decisions.
What are practical use cases for Experian Audiences in Yahoo DSP?
With Experian audiences available in Yahoo DSP, what are 2–3 ‘go-to’ plays advertisers should run (e.g., prospecting, mid-funnel qualification, suppression, measurement improvement), and what success metrics should they watch to prove incrementality?
I’ll start with a prospecting use case. Yahoo DSP advertisers can activate Experian’s demographic, lifestyle, household and credit propensity segments to identify high-value prospects, while suppressing their own first-party audiences such as CRM lists, site visitors or recent purchasers to ensure that they are truly reaching net new customers.
Advertisers can easily leverage the Yahoo Conversion API (CAPI) to send conversion data back to Yahoo DSP and be able to track incremental conversions from these new audiences.
Another example is reaching audiences that are in the market for a purchase. In this case, advertisers can combine Experian’s category-specific audiences, such as auto intenders, with Yahoo search signals to intersect household qualification with real-time intent. For example, an automotive brand can reach consumers who not only fall within priority income bands but are also actively searching for vehicle models or categories.
Contact us
About our experts
Jessica Rocco, Senior Director, Business Development at Yahoo DSP
Jessica Rocco is a Senior Director of Business Development for Yahoo Demand-Side Platform (DSP), with over 15 years of experience driving strategic data initiatives and partnerships across the programmatic advertising ecosystem, with a focus on identity, targeting, and measurement.
Latest posts
Partnership Yields Increased Match and Connectivity Rate Through Tapad Graph, acquired by Experian March 27, 2018 — New York, N.Y. — Tapad, part of Experian, is reinventing personalization for the modern marketer and today announced the impactful results of its strategic partnership with Flashtalking, the leading global independent platform for ad delivery, unification and insights. Flashtalking is one of Tapad's most engaged partners, using the Tapad Graph to unify cross-device engagement and identity-driven consumer behaviors for attribution modeling. The company leverages a unique identifier that, in conjunction with Tapad's Graph, provides robust multi-touch attribution solution for its clients. This partnership has resulted in above-industry match and bridge rates for Flashtalking and its customers. Overall, the Tapad Graph yielded a 71 percent match rate with 41 percent of converters engaging on multiple devices, highlighting the importance of cross-device measurement. Tapad’s identity solutions provide Flashtalking with a more holistic view of global engagement. Flashtalking marries ad server log file data with the Tapad Graph to connect all interactions in the consumer journey. This enables Flashtalking to provide more accurate and impactful cross-device attribution, which ultimately enables better optimization. These achievements have led to recognition of Tapad and Flashtalking’s work by the I-COM Global Forum for Marketing, Data and Measurement. “Tapad allows us to understand user engagement across devices and platforms at both the household or individual user level, which is extremely beneficial when providing marketers with true path to conversion and attribution,” said Steve Latham, global head of analytics at Flashtalking. “Since our relationship began, we’ve successfully leveraged Tapad data to provide more accurate, actionable insights that have helped numerous brands achieve substantial gains in media effectiveness.” Flashtalking client Michael Lamontagne, SVP of analytics and CRM at 22squared says “We are big believers in using cross-device insights to improve our campaigns. Flashtalking has been a strategic partner in the pursuit of that goal. By incorporating the Tapad Graph, Flashtalking delivers powerful insights into user engagement and media attribution across browsers and devices. Of equal importance, their bundled solution makes it easy and efficient, saving our team countless hours of busy work.” Contact us today
The Tapad Device Graph™ Complements Freckle’s IoT Capabilities to Extend Scale and Precision of Audience Data New York, NY — December 6, 2017 — Tapad, part of Experian, is the leader in cross-device marketing technology and Freckle IoT, the global leader in multi-touch, offline attribution, today announced they are partnering to provide brands with a holistic and insightful view of their customers, in predefined locations in all global markets. Starting today Freckle IoT will be leveraging the Tapad Device Graph™ to supplement the company’s data set to offer brands more granular attribution data. Consumer’s online behavior is becoming more and more complex, with the average consumer owning three or more devices and 35 percent of consumers converting on a different device from the one on which they started their research. These interactions become even more complicated when considering how online interactions and media impact offline sales. The collaboration between Tapad and Freckle, which combines Freckle IoT’s persistent location data with Tapad’s proprietary cross-device technology, is an important step in empowering brands with the information they need to better understand how digital media, consumed across multiple devices, is impacting offline attribution. Using its opt-in, first-party data, Freckle IoT helps brands measure the effectiveness of their advertising by independently matching media spend to in-store visits. Tapad’s technology extends Freckle’s data-set by allowing brands to access additional deterministic and probabilistic data, at scale and across all devices, to analyze consumer behavior ahead of in-store purchase. “Combining our technology with Tapad’s identity-driven solutions was a natural fit for our business,” said Neil Sweeney, founder and CEO at Freckle IoT. “With our unbiased, agnostic measurement and Tapad’s precise and privacy-safe data set, we knew this partnership would be a strong complement to providing more effective results for the needs of our brand partners.” For more information on Freckle IoT’s measurement offerings, please visit www.freckleiot.com. Contact us today
London – 24 November, 2017 – Tapad, part of Experian, is the leader in cross-device marketing technology and continues to broaden its reach across EMEA. The business today reported a 20 percent growth in the scope of its regional device graph, a data set used by organisations to map consumers to their devices, enabling better, more personalised cross-device marketing. This news complements Tapad’s recent expansion of its UK team with the hire of experienced solutions engineer, Davide Rosamilia. As the demand for cross-device technology solutions continues to grow around the globe, coupled with the emergence of regulations such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Tapad is committed to offering suppliers the greatest level of insight without compromising consumer privacy. Since Tapad started licensing its proprietary Tapad Device GraphTM just over a year ago, demand for the company’s technology has experienced significant growth. New supply partnerships and proactive data sourcing have also meant an increase in devices across key markets, which contribute to the overall 20 percent growth of the EMEA device graph, including a 44 percent increase in the U.K., 47 percent in France, and 85 percent in Germany. “We’re continuing to invest heavily in growing our regional device graph, allowing us to better meet the needs of EMEA marketers as they strive to reach individuals with greater precision in some of the most tightly regulated marketplaces worldwide,” said Tom Rolph, VP EMEA, Tapad. “This year, we have also welcomed 10 new data suppliers whom we’ve helped to increase cross-device amplification, attribution and audience extension, helping to further set us apart in the marketplace and successfully expand our EMEA presence.” Available around the world, the Device Graph provides access to Tapad’s globally compliant and privacy-safe datasets across EMEA, APAC and the U.S., and offers deeper knowledge of consumer preferences, purchase intent, and conversion behaviors. “Tapad has shown a unique ability to adapt to the nuances of the local EMEA market and display impressive growth without sacrificing dedication to privacy,” said Alistair Hill, CEO and Co-founder at On Device Research. “When we started vetting technology vendors, we needed to be sure that we selected a partner that could offer compliant and privacy-safe datasets to operate within our stringent data standards. Tapad’s probabilistic solution offered us greater scale, greater device reach, and increased engagement without compromising on privacy.” Contact us today