When I first saw that Yahoo and the advertising holding company WPP were set to announce a partnership, my immediate reaction was: Here’s the first of many Yahoo attempts to rebuff Carl Icahn’s (and to an extent, Microsoft’s) hostile takeover bid. However, it seems that WPP is actually upset that the Yahoo and Microsoft merger didn’t happen, according to The New York Times.

“Anybody who is a customer in the marketplace likes to see balance in it,” WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell told The Times. “No one likes oligopolies. Search in America is imbalanced. That’s what Yahoo and Microsoft offered, a bit more balance.”

Looks like even Yahoo’s partners are now kicking it when it’s down.

The WPP and Yahoo deal will grant WPP’s clients advertising access to publishers using Yahoo’s auction advertising service, Right Media. This new range of sites will add avenues from which WPP’s ad-targeting division, 24/7 Real Media, can pull data. When it comes to creating more relevant, highly-targeted ads, the more data, the better.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this and other Yahoo partnerships are going to ease the pressure put on the company to take another look at the Microsoft deal. Some of those partners are pushing for it as well.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.