This is not about AI.
This is not about efficiency.
This is about who ends up in control of the decision surface.

Everything you’re reading about Yahoo’s agentic push is framed as convenience. Fewer spreadsheets. Faster activation. Cleaner workflows. The subtext is comfort: we fixed the annoying parts for you.

That framing is useful.
It’s also deliberately incomplete.

Because this isn’t a better wrench.
It’s a power shift.

Every platform that ever mattered learned the same lesson: the money isn’t in the product people talk about. It’s in the layer everything else runs on.

Amazon doesn’t make its margin selling things. It makes it renting infrastructure.
Apple didn’t win by building a phone. It won by owning the toll booth.
Microsoft stopped caring about Windows the moment Azure became the business.

Control the substrate.
Collect the rent.

That’s what Yahoo is doing here.

Not “improving media buying.”
Repositioning itself as the layer media buying happens on.

And that’s a very different relationship than most buyers are admitting to themselves.

Using a tool keeps you in charge.
Renting infrastructure gives someone else visibility, leverage….and