Ad Tech Briefing: Yahoo pairs with Kochava to pitch ‘agentic’ DSP workflows

Of course, this has not gone unnoticed among publicly traded DSPs and SSPs, with The Trade Desk publicizing the availability of Koa Agents within its platform, while PubMatic has similarly launched its own.

It’s within this context that Yahoo and Kochava have announced a partnership, introducing a dedicated Yahoo DSP workspace within Kochava’s StationOne platform — a tool that brings together advertisers’ different AI tools within a single workspace. 

The pair positions the tie-up as a step toward agentic AI-driven media buying, with a system of pre-built “skills,” or “agents,” and connectors that let advertisers plan, execute, and optimize campaigns through an AI-assisted interface.  

Per the duo, this can standardize workflows, reduce manual inputs, and allow buyers to operate across tools rather than within a single DSP interface. This tie-up aligns with Yahoo’s earlier message to the market by effectively moving campaign orchestration upstream into a third-party layer, offering more flexible infrastructure component — or “data backbone” — within a wider ecosystem of tools and agents.  

Yahoo maintains that its core capabilities — including data, machine-learning-driven decisioning, optimization, and measurement — remain proprietary and unchanged, regardless of where campaigns are initiated; i.e., auction mechanics, targeting, pricing, and brand safety controls are applied within its environment.

So, while platforms like StationOne may coordinate campaign logic across channels, Yahoo positions its DSP as the system of record, responsible for enforcing performance and quality standards.

Yahoo also argues that making its capabilities accessible through external environments does not dilute differentiation; rather, it extends the reach of its data and optimization engines.

If campaign setup, pacing decisions, and performance diagnostics are increasingly handled through pre-configured agents, then elements of decision-making risk are shifting outside the DSP — a trend reflected in The Trade Desk’s recent tie-ups with Pacvue and Skaai.  

For Yahoo, the integration reinforces a strategic pivot already underway. If its DSP becomes one of several execution endpoints in a multi-agent ecosystem, its competitive edge shifts toward data, inventory access, and optimization infrastructure, rather than user interface control.

For Kochava, the opportunity is to position StationOne as an orchestration layer that sits across the programmatic stack — potentially standardizing how campaigns are executed irrespective of the underlying DSP.

Speaking with Digiday, Charles Manning, CEO, Kochava, compared StationOne to Slack. “Instead of connecting people on your team, the way that Slack does, StationOne connects all the tools that ad ops, media buying teams, or traders use,” he explained. “I think we’re going to see a de-duplication of tooling by teams where things are coming together, as opposed to so splintered and separated apart… orchestration is enabling that.”

Whether that dynamic ultimately makes DSPs more interchangeable is an open question and poses similar discussions about the role of campaign teams, given that Google and Meta recently made similar launches. 

For now, the partnership serves less as a definitive turning point and more as a directional signal: as agentic layers begin to sit above the programmatic stack, the industry’s focus is shifting from how ads are bought to who — or what — is doing the buying.

What we’ve heard

“POSSIBLE is coming to Europe next year.”

— A well-placed source confirms that Hyve Group plans to further squeeze ad tech companies’ marketing budgets. 

Numbers to know

Key stats from CheckMyAds‘ latest annual report:

• $1 trillion: projected size of the global advertising market, making it one of the largest — and least regulated
• $84 billion: annual cost of ad fraud worldwide, i.e., spend siphoned away from legitimate publishers
• ~4 million: number of small businesses using Google Ads, illustrating the scale of reliance on major ad platforms
• 580%: gap between reported vs. actual performance in a Google Performance Max test (cost-per-lead discrepancy)

What we’ve covered

OpenAI starts laying foundations for ChatGPT ads in the EU

A code update to its conversion tracking pixel, which Digiday reviewed, points to the company building the technical groundwork needed to run advertising in the European Union.

From ad tech tax to AI data brokers: the new middlemen keep 100%, publishers say

Publishers are facing a new and more severe threat than the ad tech tax: third-party AI data brokers who scrape their content with zero compensation. This “scraper economy,” now rebranding as “agentic infrastructure,” represents a $1 billion industry.

What we’re reading

Google says it’s open to putting ads in Gemini

Google has so far not put ads in its Gemini AI app, but it’s not ruling it out, according to execs speaking on its recent earnings call.

Goldman Sachs and Bain lead investment in AI marketing startup 

The Trade Desk has also invested in Hightouch via its TD7 vehicle, which is now valued at $2.75 billion

Meta faces U.S. lawmaker scrutiny over removal of lawyer ads for social media addiction cases

Meta should not have removed advertisements from attorneys seeking ​clients who claim they were harmed by social ‌media platforms, two U.S. senators said on Friday in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

OpenAI is sharing its users’ data with advertisers 

ChatGPT has updated its privacy policy, formalizing data sharing with marketing partners and confirming that it receives purchase data from advertisers.