The Drum catches up with Adam Roodman, general manager of the tech company’s demand-side platform, at CES.
Adam Roodman helps steer Yahoo’s DSP
At the start of 2023, Yahoo pulled the plug on its sell-side platform and native ad network and decided to go all in on one thing – its demand-side platform (DSP). It’s a bold move, especially in an era when everyone else seems busy juggling every adtech acronym under the sun. So, why streamline when the industry is fixated on expansion and AI? According to Adam Roodman, who helps steer Yahoo’s DSP, the answer boils down to one word: speed.
We caught up with Roodman at CES, where you couldn’t turn a corner without stumbling on AI hype, to discuss Yahoo’s latest DSP initiatives, Blueprint and Backstage, plus new partnerships with Peer39, Scope3 and Jounce Media. But while CES was buzzing with generative AI demos, Roodman was adamant that Yahoo’s clients mostly want to accelerate time-to-market.
“You know what it’s not? The words aren’t AI; the words are speed, speed, speed, speed,” he says. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, Yahoo, you need to be fast.’ It’s, ‘Hey, we need to be fast.’ That’s what I’m hearing from our customers.”
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Yahoo’s journey here started with a major reset: “Going into 2023, we made the strategic decision to shut down the sell-side platform, shut down the native ad network. Let’s just focus on the one of the three platforms that we had the most traction with – frankly, that was the DSP. So we spent all of 2023 doing some pretty transformative stuff around simplifying the stack.”
That meant migrating to the cloud, exiting less-robust markets and rolling multiple adtech solutions into a single, omnichannel DSP that has a big emphasis on connected TV (CTV). “We did everything you could do.”
So, where does AI factor in? Enter Blueprint, Yahoo’s machine-learning performance engine – though Roodman stresses it’s not forced on anyone.
“Blueprint launched in June. It’s our AI for machine learning, for performance. We process the optimization engine 10x faster and look at 90% more signals so we can bid more effectively. It drives performance up, costs down and we give the savings back to our customers. But it’s up to them – they get to choose if they turn it on.”
Choice is central to Yahoo’s DSP philosophy. Its customers are typically large, sophisticated brands that want the freedom to configure campaigns their way.
Yahoo also introduced Backstage, a direct marketplace for premium inventory – effectively cutting out extra “tech tax.”
“Backstage is our ad product where we access premium inventory directly, straight to the publisher,” Roodman says. “We bypass the need to plug into a third-party exchange. Roku just joined along with about 40 or so other CTV publishers and about 100 display publishers.”
By forging direct relationships, Yahoo aims to boost transparency and control for advertisers.
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Yahoo recently announced three new supply curation partnerships: Peer39, Scope3 and Jounce Media. Each offers a specialized lens – contextual, sustainability or brand safety – and Yahoo’s allowing advertisers decide how to apply them.
“Other platforms may take it upon themselves to decide what they think is quality. We want to enable that large marketer that we talked about before; they’re sophisticated. They can do it themselves. They can do it at the campaign level.”
Underneath it all is ConnectID, Yahoo’s identity graph that pulls from Yahoo Mail, Sports, Finance and other properties. Roodman sees this as a “future-proof” solution in a world where cookies and IP addresses are slipping away.
Despite AI hogging the spotlight at CES, Roodman insists Yahoo’s customers are laser-focused on cutting out friction in their workflows. “Sure, there’s been a lot of talk about AI, but the feedback from our clients is: ‘Help us get things done in less time. If it helps me do it faster, I’m listening.’”
That doesn’t mean Yahoo is ignoring generative AI. A new chatbot called Blueprint IQ helps users navigate the DSP with simple text queries. But for Roodman, that’s still an extension of Yahoo’s speed-first play.
“We want our buyers spending less time digging through how-to guides and more time launching great campaigns.”
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Before heading off to the Yahoo happy hour, I ask Roodman for a final thought. He didn’t mince his words: “We’re all for AI – if it makes things faster. Speed is the name of the game.”
And that might be the best takeaway from Yahoo’s DSP renaissance: in a marketing universe brimming with buzzwords, maybe the real ‘next big thing’ is just getting from brief to live faster than ever. AI is cool, but speed, it turns out, might be cooler.