SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – At the Beet Retreat San Juan, Beth Gross, head of commerce media at Yahoo DSP, described a business that is trying to serve two masters without upsetting either.
On one side, Yahoo helps brands tap into commerce data and signals to improve campaigns. On the other, it helps retailers and commerce partners build their own media networks.
“There’s two sides to this coin,” Gross said in this interview with Beet.TV, noting that the platform supports both audience activation and the infrastructure behind retail media. The goal is flexibility, or at least the appearance of it, depending on which partner is asking.
Transparency becomes a selling point, finally
As commerce data floods programmatic pipes, Gross acknowledged that keeping everything interoperable and trustworthy is no small feat. Her answer sounded refreshingly simple for ad tech.
“We call it choice and control. So we are all about transparency,” she said. That includes avoiding the industry’s favorite fine print tactics.
“There’s no hidden fees or bid shading or nickel-and-diming our partners,” she added.
With integrations across dozens of data partners and environments, Yahoo is aiming to meet advertisers wherever they are, whether that is a clean room, a cloud platform or a spreadsheet someone refuses to give up.
AI agents join the team, but humans keep the keys
Gross also discussed the inevitable AI question with a framework that sounds more like a group project than a robot takeover. Yahoo calls it “Yours, Mine and Ours,” a model that lets partners bring their own AI agents or use Yahoo’s.
“If a partner, agency or brand has their own agents, bring it to the party,” she said. For those who do not, Yahoo’s agents can handle routine work like reporting, troubleshooting and audience building. The pitch is not about replacing people but sparing them from the tasks they already avoid.
“We can really simplify the tasks so that we take out some of that routine and help it be more automated,” Gross explained. The “ours” piece, she added, is where collaboration happens. “Bring your ideas. We’ll bring our ideas and we’ll build it together.”
Winning means knowing who actually bought something
With commerce media budgets growing, Gross believes the winners will not be the ones with the flashiest dashboards but the ones with the best data. Specifically, data tied to real purchases.
“The partners that are really gonna win are gonna have that one-to-one purchase signal,” she said.
While modeling and predictive tools still matter, she warned that targeting people who have already converted is not a growth strategy. Instead, she urged brands to lean into first-party data and use it to find new customers, not just congratulate existing ones.
In a market full of signals, the clearest one still comes from someone buying the product.
You’re watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2026, presented by Alliant and TransUnion. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
