Yahoo has held preliminary talks with investment banks and potential buyers of its demand-side platform, according to sources familiar with the developments.
Yahoo officially turned 30 last month, and in its trailblazing pomp of the 1990s and early 2000s, it was known as “the gateway to the internet.” However, in recent years, its various owners and leadership teams have had different ideas on monetizing its assets.
Under its current ownership, Apollo Global Management – the private equity giant that took over Yahoo in 2021 – this could include a future without ad tech assets, with suitors inquiring about its DSP in recent weeks.
Inbound interest
While the latest developments do not amount to a formal sales process — Digiday understands all such recent discussions have resulted from inbound inquiries — they indicate an appetite for further ad tech consolidation.
Four separate sources, all of whom requested anonymity to maintain relationships, told Digiday Yahoo had contemplated the prospect of a potential sale of its DSP for some time, even if this was just a case of scenario planning.
However, since the start of early 2025, speculation over such divestiture has become more palpable, with two separate sources informing Digiday that investment bankers have been jockeying to engineer such a deal.
One source told Digiday that preliminary discussions with a competitive DSP – the source declined to name this party – took place in recent weeks, although such talks are understood to have since ceased.
When Digiday approached them for comment, spokespeople for Apollo Global Management and Yahoo declined to comment on the record about such assertions.
Yahoo’s ad tech strategy under Apollo
When Apollo Global paid U.S. telco Verizon $5 billion to take ownership of Yahoo in 2021, it inherited a full suite of ad tech tools. However, it has since significantly reduced such interests, including the 2023 closure of its supply-side platform, a process that involved significant layoffs.
Instead, Yahoo has inked a long-term partnership with Taboola, whereby the latter party powers native advertising across Yahoo’s digital properties. More recently, Yahoo appears to have doubled down on its efforts to monetize its remaining ad tech asset, inking partnerships with Kroger, being first to market with transparency standards and placing it front-and-center of sales pitches at major trade shows.
It is difficult to officially rank the industry’s top DSPs primarily because Google (the widely presumed market leader) doesn’t break out DV360’s earnings, although it is understood to be a “tier one” player along with The Trade Desk and Amazon.
Yahoo is understood to be among the chasing pack – also in this cohort are players such as Adform, MediaMath, Nexxen, Quantcast, StackAdapt, Viant and Xandr – with its DSP understood to be growing in stature.
Advertiser Perceptions data recently shared with Digiday suggests media buyers are increasingly eager to diversify the number of DSPs they work with, and many are eager to reduce their reliance on Big Tech offerings.
Robert Webster, founder and CEO of TAU Marketing Solutions, told Digiday the Yahoo DSP is widely regarded as one of the best independent “feature-led DSPs.” He added, “If you look at it, for the first time in 10 years, the market is wide open… the DSP space is going to be transformed by AI in the next two years.”
Overall M&A outlook
Sources consulted by Digiday claimed the most likely parties interested in the Yahoo DSP would either be competitors attempting to gain market share through consolidation or strategic players, such as a retail media network eager to add a buying tool to its stack.
LUMA Partners CEO Terence Kawaja noted how mergers between sector rivals are rare occurrences, although he did note that much of the recent M&A activity in the space was driven by strategic acquirers. “All of the trends that drove that activity persist,” he added. “We still have the need for third- and first-party data… while the green shoots of AI and CTV also persist.”
One anonymous source with knowledge of the developments said it was unlikely that another PE firm would buy the DSP without the data assets made available via Yahoo’s portfolio of web properties.
“There’s probably not enough profitability for a PE to be that interested unless there’s a clear way of making cash, and if there was, then Apollo would have squeezed it out already, so it’s a tricky one,” added the source.
Speaking with Digiday on the publication of LUMA Partners’ Q1 2025 market report, Conor McKenna, a partner at the investment bank, observed how T-Mobile’s ad tech acquisitions and Braze’s first scaled deal were notable throughout the period.
He added, “Google announced a huge [$32 billion] deal [to buy Wiz],” he said, noting how this was the first such deal from a Big Tech player in some time. “I would interpret it as the expectation of a more conciliatory regulatory environment where they can potentially get big deals done.”
However, given the current market uncertainty over the potential impact of tariff policies from the current U.S. administration, deal flow may be stalled in the coming months, according to LUMA Partners’s assessment. “Right now, we don’t know if that’s going to be a macro shock,” observed McKenna. “Right now, all we know is that there’s macro uncertainty.”
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