Infillion teams with Yobi to crack walled garden automation on the open web

Infillion today announced a strategic partnership with Yobi to deliver walled garden-level campaign performance on the open web, effectively bringing Google Performance Max-style optimization to independent advertisers and agencies without the black-box constraints that have frustrated marketers.

The collaboration, announced January 15, 2026, combines Infillion's composable advertising infrastructure with Yobi's advanced machine learning capabilities to address what the companies describe as a critical industry challenge. AI models require differentiated consumer signals at scale, yet accessing such data has grown increasingly difficult following third-party cookie complications and the concentration of behavioral data within walled gardens.

Through the partnership, Infillion clients gain access to Yobi's privacy-first optimization services, including advanced audience targeting, bid optimization, and identity resolution capabilities powered by what Yobi characterizes as one of the largest consented consumer datasets in the industry. The announcement arrives as advertisers express mounting frustration with Performance Max's limited transparency into campaign operations and reporting.

"This partnership is fundamentally about leveling the playing field—bringing the performance capabilities of walled gardens to the open web," said Rob Emrich, Founder and Executive Chair at Infillion. "Yobi's privacy-preserving approach to behavioral data solves the signal scarcity problem that has plagued the industry since third-party cookie deprecation, while our composable platform ensures these AI capabilities can be deployed with speed and precision."

Privacy-first behavioral intelligence at scale

Yobi compiled what it describes as the largest consented consumer database in the United States, democratizing behavioral intelligence to drive enterprise growth and advance the study of human decision-making. The company's differentiated approach creates privacy-preserving representations of behavior from predictive signals, unlocking customer preference insights that technology giants enjoy while making AI and machine learning capabilities accessible for enterprises of all sizes.

For advertisers and media buyers, this translates into sharper audience targeting, faster optimization, and stronger return on ad spend without relying on cookies or walled-garden data. As a steward for behavioral datasets from multiple industries, Yobi uses machine learning technologies to build tools that allow clients to understand current and prospective customer behavior without handling sensitive, identifiable information.

"As AI transforms advertising, the winners will be the companies that can channel customer data into real performance at scale - without the privacy risks or being beholden to the biggest tech platforms," said Max Snow, CEO and Co-founder of Yobi. "With Infillion, we're bringing our behavioral AI directly into media buying and optimization workflows, helping traders identify higher-intent audiences, adapt faster to live signals, and drive stronger campaign outcomes, using trusted privacy-first signals built for today's addressability landscape."

Snow emphasized that Infillion's open platform makes it possible to activate these models across channels, "proving that open ecosystems deliver better performance than closed systems."

Breaking the Performance Max monopoly on transparency

With Yobi's AI embedded in Infillion's platform, advertisers can use advanced machine-learning models to inform audience targeting and real-time optimization inside their current media workflows, rather than handing those decisions off to closed, black-box systems. The partnership directly addresses advertiser frustration with limiting AI optimization choices like Google's Performance Max with its lack of transparency and control.

Infillion's new offering with Yobi allows for audience insight ownership, including segment-level performance across all campaigns, bid-level visibility, budget control and reporting, forecasting based on actual delivery data, and measurement independence. These capabilities respond to persistent advertiser demands for greater visibility into automated campaign performance that have shaped platform development throughout 2025.

The announcement positions the partnership as delivering walled garden performance with open web control through AI-driven optimization comparable to Google Performance Max, but with full transparency and interoperability. Yobi's predictive models, data, and real-time signals dynamically adapt to shifting consumer intent, automatically optimizing targeting and bidding to accelerate performance.

Privacy-preserving enrichment built on compliance and first-party signals minimizes enterprise risk while maximizing performance. The technical implementation delivers operational efficiency through a unified behavioral training set for enterprise AI that reduces data fragmentation and vendor sprawl, accelerating model deployment and activation.

Integrated behavioral signals give advertisers unmatched visibility into customers and their intent, as well as what actually drives ad performance, at scale. This represents enterprise-grade infrastructure addressing the coordination challenges that industry experts have identified in automated advertising development.

Technical architecture and market positioning

The partnership becomes effective immediately, with Yobi services being integrated across Infillion's managed service and self-service campaign offerings throughout 2026. Through this collaboration, Yobi serves as Infillion's audience and modeling partner, with its behavioral AI as the primary optimization solution across supported campaigns and its services available to clients across both of Infillion's business units.

Infillion operates as the industry's first agent-native media execution platform, built on the principle that composability beats consolidation. Through the unification of MediaMath, TrueX, Gimbal, and Drawbridge, Infillion offers 192-plus interoperable components that solve advertising's false choice between walled garden black boxes and vendor sprawl complexity.

With over $750 million in technology investment, Infillion delivers open, composable infrastructure designed for the agentic AI era. The company relaunched its platform positioning in January 2026 as a third way between walled garden black boxes and the operational complexity of managing multiple independent vendors.

Yobi was founded to advance both commercial innovation and the scientific study of human behavior. The team includes machine learning experts who have built recommendation systems and AI products at Amazon, Uber, Twitter, Meta, and other major technology companies. This technical pedigree provides the foundation for the behavioral modeling capabilities that distinguish Yobi's approach to audience intelligence.

Industry context and competitive dynamics

The partnership announcement arrives during a period of significant transformation in programmatic advertising infrastructure. Independent advertising technology companies have struggled to compete as market forces shifted toward integrated platforms and alternative inventory sources, while open web display advertising faces structural challenges beyond individual platform conduct.

Throughout 2025, Performance Max campaigns expanded their reach across Google's properties while introducing modest transparency improvements including channel-level reporting and enhanced search terms visibility. These developments addressed some advertiser feedback while maintaining the automation-first approach that defines the campaign type.

Microsoft Advertising similarly enhanced its Performance Max offering by expanding search theme capacity from 25 to 50, providing advertisers with additional signals to guide machine learning optimization. These platform developments demonstrate the industry trajectory toward increased automation with varying approaches to advertiser control and visibility.

The partnership positioning emphasizes differentiation from walled garden approaches through transparency and interoperability rather than attempting to match the closed optimization capabilities of integrated platforms. This strategy aligns with industry discussions about whether advertising technology requires new protocols or whether existing market incentives prevent adoption regardless of technical merit.

Privacy and addressability landscape

The Infillion-Yobi partnership architecture reflects the advertising industry's adaptation to signal deprecation following Google's reversal of third-party cookie deprecation plans in April 2025. While Google maintained cookie access in Chrome after years of industry preparation for their removal, advertisers still face addressability challenges across the broader ecosystem.

Privacy-first data strategies have become increasingly important as publishers and advertisers seek alternatives to third-party cookies for audience targeting and campaign optimization. First-party data collection strategies and contextual targeting capabilities have gained prominence as foundational elements of modern digital advertising operations.

Yobi's emphasis on consented consumer data and privacy-preserving behavioral representations addresses both regulatory compliance requirements and advertiser demand for differentiated signals. The approach positions behavioral intelligence as accessible through privacy-compliant methods rather than requiring reliance on walled garden first-party data assets.

The partnership technical implementation uses what the companies describe as privacy-first optimization services, though specific technical details about data processing, signal derivation, and identity resolution methodologies were not disclosed in the announcement. These operational specifics will likely determine how effectively the partnership delivers on its positioning claims.

Market implications for independent advertising

The announcement challenges the premise that walled garden performance advantages derive primarily from proprietary data access rather than integration efficiencies and scale economies. By positioning behavioral AI capabilities as accessible through partnership rather than requiring vertical integration, Infillion and Yobi suggest alternative paths exist for independent advertising technology development.

However, this positioning faces market dynamics that have historically favored integrated platforms. Advertising technology consolidation has accelerated as companies prioritize automation over transparency, with major platforms building proprietary agentic capabilities rather than adopting open standards.

Industry protocol initiatives have faced adoption challenges when major platforms decline participation, creating questions about whether open ecosystems can achieve sufficient scale to compete effectively with integrated alternatives. The Infillion-Yobi partnership will need to demonstrate concrete performance results to validate its positioning claims.

For agencies and advertisers managing campaigns across multiple platforms, the partnership provides an alternative to choosing between automation efficiency and campaign visibility. The technical implementation will determine whether this middle path delivers sufficient performance to justify operational complexity compared to consolidated platform approaches.

Marketing professionals allocating programmatic advertising budgets now face an expanding set of automation options, from fully automated Performance Max campaigns with limited controls to more transparent alternatives that require additional technical integration. These choices reflect broader industry tension between efficiency through automation and strategic control through visibility.

The partnership represents a significant test case for whether open ecosystem approaches can compete with walled garden automation capabilities. Success would validate the composability strategy that Infillion has positioned as a third way in digital advertising infrastructure. Failure would reinforce market dynamics favoring vertical integration and platform consolidation.

Timeline

• January 15, 2026: Infillion announces strategic partnership with Yobi to deliver Performance Max-style optimization on the open web
• January 2026: Infillion relaunches as agent-native composable platform positioning infrastructure as alternative to walled gardens
• Throughout 2026: Yobi services integrated across Infillion's managed service and self-service campaign offerings
• 2025: Performance Max campaigns expanded capabilities including Waze inventory, channel reporting, and search terms visibility
• October 2025: Ad Context Protocol launches aiming to provide unified interface for AI agents in advertising
• April 2025: Google reverses third-party cookie deprecation plans after five years of industry preparation
• 2024-2025: Major platforms including Amazon, Meta, and Google expand AI-powered campaign automation capabilities

Summary

Who: Infillion, an agent-native media execution platform formed through unification of MediaMath, TrueX, Gimbal, and Drawbridge, partnered with Yobi, a behavioral AI company that compiled one of the largest consented consumer databases in the United States. Rob Emrich serves as Infillion's Founder and Executive Chair, while Max Snow serves as Yobi's CEO and Co-founder.

What: The strategic partnership combines Infillion's composable advertising infrastructure with Yobi's machine learning capabilities to deliver Performance Max-style campaign optimization on the open web. The collaboration provides advertisers with AI-driven audience targeting, bid optimization, and identity resolution capabilities while maintaining transparency, budget control, and measurement independence unavailable in walled garden alternatives.

When: Announced January 15, 2026, with integration beginning immediately across Infillion's managed service and self-service campaign offerings throughout 2026.

Where: The partnership operates across Infillion's open web advertising platform, serving independent advertisers and agencies seeking alternatives to walled garden automation. Yobi's behavioral AI becomes the primary optimization solution across supported campaigns in both of Infillion's business units.

Why: The partnership addresses advertiser frustration with walled garden automation platforms like Google Performance Max that limit transparency and control while concentrating behavioral data within closed ecosystems. By combining privacy-first behavioral intelligence with composable infrastructure, the collaboration aims to prove that open ecosystems can deliver competitive performance without requiring advertisers to sacrifice visibility into campaign operations.