Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes: Turning Measurement Into Real-Time Optimization

The programmatic ecosystem has never been simple. While revolutionizing how advertising works and creating niche industries along the way, the ecosystem took a long time to effectively prove that advertising works. We, as an industry, are now in a position where measurement and outcomes are just as accessible as audiences for targeting. 

The C-Suite needs to quickly know that programmatic investments work while being faced with even more pressure to do more with less (ahem, AI, automation). Most companies are sitting on rich transactional details that aren’t shared with marketing and agency teams. Finally, there are a plethora of retail media networks with bespoke go-to-market approaches for measurement.

So what do marketers do? Their job is defined by moving boxes off shelves, cars off lots and getting feet and/or cars to locations. 

Rethinking Outcomes at Yahoo DSP

At Yahoo DSP, we spent a lot of time thinking and designing around a couple of key themes:

• Who are the providers who have the best measurement coverage and optimization signals for platforms to execute on?
• How can we design a framework to minimize one-off integrations and end-user experiences while providing flexibility for unique offerings of these vendors?
• Where can we provide time savings to marketers and agency teams to understand what media drives their bottom line?
• What can we do to make optimizations quick and meaningful so that budgets are spent at maximum efficiency?

These questions led to Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes (IFO), a solution that connects programmatic media to real-world outcomes and automatically optimizes campaigns while they are still in flight.

Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes: More Than Optimization

Historically, outcomes have been a measurement conversation. Long-range studies that don’t pay off until weeks after campaigns end. Data that’s not aligned with how media is purchased. Insights that only informs what to do next time. 

In the greater push to automation and AI-everywhere, the message is clear. Outcomes, like anything else in the programmatic ecosystem, need to be automated to reduce friction and time spent and to inform decisions while campaigns are still in flight; To truly drive performance, outcomes must evolve from a retrospective measurement exercise into an optimization engine.

At Yahoo DSP, we approach outcomes through this lens. We partner with best-in-class measurement solutions across industries, from Commerce Media Networks and CPG to QSR, Automotive, and Pharma, while also investing heavily in our own proprietary capabilities. Powered by the breadth and depth of Yahoo data, including Yahoo Purchase Receipts and Yahoo Store Visits, our measurement solutions are designed to close the outcomes loop as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting weeks for validation, advertisers gain timely visibility into how exposure translates into real-world behavior. And with our identity solution, Yahoo ConnectID, those insights go even further, linking omnichannel exposure to actual sales and in-store visits at both the user and household level.

These rich, real-world signals then feed directly into our Yahoo Blueprint Performance, our AI engine. From there, Yahoo Blueprint Performance makes better optimization decisions - decisions that humans cannot make at scale to drive more and better outcomes. That’s the role of Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes: connecting measurement, identity, and AI to enable timely, in-flight optimization based on business results.

Consider a retail media network. By ingesting SKU-level product data alongside daily online and offline transactions, Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes can directly link media exposure to purchases and dynamically shift budgets toward the creatives, devices, or placements driving the greatest impact.

The same approach applies in QSR, a traditionally difficult vertical to measure sales outcomes. For example, by integrating deterministic, transaction-level purchase data from Attain, Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes can link programmatic exposure directly to verified merchant and brand-level sales activity. Attain’s owned and operated dataset provides daily visibility into real purchase behavior across restaurants and retailers, enabling Yahoo Blueprint to optimize in-flight toward the audiences, creatives, and placements driving actual sales while the campaign is still live.

How Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes Power Performance for CPG, Pharma and Retail Media Network

A CPG advertiser partnered with Yahoo DSP to drive incremental sales by acquiring new brand buyers. By activating Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes and leveraging Circana purchase data, the advertiser connected programmatic media exposure to sales, enabling real-time targeting optimization and driving higher returns in mid-campaign sales. 

With Yahoo ConnectID tying omnichannel exposure to household-level sales, and outcome signals feeding directly into Yahoo Blueprint, the campaign dynamically optimized as performance evolved.

Additionally, the same insights revealed which segments have the greatest propensity to complete purchases to inform audience targeting for future campaign planning.

The results:

• $7.9MM+ in gross sales¹
• 1.5MM+ purchases²
• 20% lift in ROAS in the second half of the campaign³
• 44% of sales driven by new buyers, alongside increased engagement from heavy and medium buyers⁴

IFO didn’t just validate performance, it helped improve it while the campaign was still live.

The same outcome-driven approach proved equally effective in Pharma.

MiQ led a campaign for a pharmaceutical advertiser, targeting audiences with a specific medical diagnosis and driving prescription growth. MiQ activated Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes alongside IQVIA Digital's healthcare data and measurement solutions to efficiently drive optimizations.

By accessing in-flight signals such as audience quality scores, office visits, and new-to-brand prescription (NBRx) conversions, the campaign moved beyond static targeting, continuously optimizing for quality and downstream impact to deliver strong results.

The results:

• 30% higher audience quality (AQ Index) vs. industry benchmark⁵
• 30% improvement in cost efficiency, with Cost Per Target declining throughout the campaign⁶
• 14% of total target reach converted to office visits⁷
• 2% of office visits converted to new-to-brand prescriptions (NBRx)⁸

Finally, a leading Retail Media Network used Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes to tie online and in-store transactions directly to media investments across its brands. By activating a dynamic workflow, they were able to build and optimize campaigns on the fly, from brand level down to individual SKUs, driving a 22% lift in ROAS⁹.

The future of programmatic isn’t about measuring outcomes after campaigns end, it’s about optimizing toward them while campaigns are still live. Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes brings measurement, identity, and AI together to turn real-world signals into actionable decisions in real time. To learn more about Yahoo In-Flight Outcomes, reach out to your Yahoo DSP representative. 

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^1-4 Circana data for  campaign in Yahoo DSP 6/30/2025 - 8/24/2025

^5-8  IQVIA Digital data for MIQ campaign in Yahoo DSP 08/2025 - 11/2025

⁹ Yahoo DSP Q1-Q2 2025

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