From the perspective of transaction structure, this paper measured the degree of the marketization of primary land market in 104 cities above the prefecture level of the Yellow River Basin from 2000 to 2016, and analyzed its spatio-temporal pattern evolution by spatial statistical model such as the Global Moran's I and $G^{*}_{i}$ index. Grey correlation analysis model was used to explore the main influencing factors of the spatial-temporal evolution of land marketization level in the study area. The results of this study showed that, from 2000 to 2016, the land marketization level of the Yellow River Basin continued to rise at first and then decreased constantly, presenting a pattern "high level in the east, but low level in the west", which showed significant periodic differences. The land marketization of the whole Yellow River Basin had significant spatial autocorrelation. After accelerated expansion, the hotspots area of land marketization centered on downstream major cities shrank slowly. Several factors, such as the level of economic development, upgrading of industrial structure, investment in fixed assets, government revenue and expenditure ratio, foreign direct investment, and location conditions, influenced the evolution of the spatial-temporal pattern of the land marketization level in the river basin. However, due to the impact of social and economic development of China, the influence degree of various factors significantly changed in different years.