Moduli problem: find a good parametrization of geometric objects of some type; parametrization should form a collection equipped with some natural geometric structure, therefore being a geometric object in its own right. While naive "parameter space" is a set, in structured formulation it is replaced by a moduli space which classifies the geometric objects we started with. In the simplest case, the moduli problem is representable by a space in a usual sense, an object in more or less the same category in which the original geometric object was. For example a manifold or a scheme where the original objects were manifolds or schemes. With harder problems the moduli lead to more and more general kinds of objects. This motivated new types of spaces as stacks, higher stacks, derived stacks and so on.
It appears that starting with original geometric category, most of the generalized objects needed to solve the moduli problem live in some nice subcategory of the category of presheaves or sheaves on the original category, including higher versions like simplicial presheaves and so on. The original category embeds by the corresponding version of Yoneda embedding into the category of (pre)sheaves. The new ambient category of presheaves not only more generically has a solution to the moduli problem, but also has many other improved natural properties like closedness under limits. Cohomology theories, various generalized cocycles and so on, generalized smoothness notions and so on, can also be accomodated after Yoneda embedding into a homotopy correct version of presheaf category, like in the emerging subject of derived geometry. In the original terms of non-generalized spaces, one would need to use all kinds of difficult and dirty technique to define and study the generalized notions, for example introducing various piecewise-continuous cocycles, multivalued or infinite-dimensional models and so on. Methods depending on Yoneda philosophy give rather universal setting to attack moduli problems and many other problems (like deformation theory), allowing to often eliminate construction of very elaborate but ad hoc modifications of original concepts. Of course, sometimes the difficult elementary models have their own specific strengths, which do not follow from the application of general methods.