Television was built on broad assumptions for decades. Brands bought airtime, targeted demographic averages, and measured success through estimates rather than actual behavior. Reach mattered more than precision, and advertisers accepted that a large percentage of impressions would inevitably land on the wrong audience.

CTV targeting is changing that equation.

As streaming reshapes viewing habits, connected TV advertising is transforming television into a more measurable, adaptable, and outcome-driven channel. What once operated primarily as a one-to-many medium now behaves much closer to digital advertising, powered by audience signals, contextual understanding, and real-time optimization.

But the shift is bigger than targeting alone. CTV is changing how advertisers think about performance, how publishers monetize premium content, and how the industry measures attention across screens.

The old rules of TV advertising are no longer enough.

Key Takeaways

• CTV targeting expands TV buying beyond broad demographic assumptions by incorporating audience, contextual, and behavioral signals.
• Connected TV advertising combines the storytelling impact of television with the precision and measurability of digital media.
• Measurement and targeting now work together, helping advertisers optimize campaigns around outcomes instead of estimated reach alone.
• Attention on CTV tends to be stronger because viewers actively choose content across streaming environments.
• Fragmentation across platforms, devices, and identity systems remains one of the biggest structural challenges in the CTV ecosystem.

From Reach to Relevance

Traditional television advertising was designed for scale. Brands purchased placements around specific programs or time slots, hoping the right audience would be watching at the right moment.

That model worked when viewing behavior was predictable and audiences gathered around the same channels. Streaming changed that dynamic entirely.

Today, audiences move fluidly across smart TVs, streaming apps, gaming consoles, FAST channels, and on-demand platforms. Viewers choose what to watch, when to watch it, and on which screen. As attention fragmented, advertisers needed more precise ways to reach audiences without wasting impressions.

That is where CTV targeting became essential.

Unlike linear TV, connected TV advertising allows advertisers to layer audience signals such as viewing behavior, household insights, contextual alignment, and content preferences into campaign activation strategies. Instead of relying only on broad demographic assumptions, campaigns can increasingly adapt to relevance, engagement patterns, and viewing environments in near real time.

This shift is redefining what television advertising can actually deliver.

Why CTV Targeting Changed Measurement

Targeting and measurement are no longer separate conversations.

One of the biggest advantages of connected TV advertising is that campaigns can now be measured with a level of granularity that traditional television never offered. Advertisers are no longer limited to panel-based estimates or generalized reach assumptions. They can evaluate campaign performance using impression-level signals, completion rates, incrementality, conversions, and cross-device behaviors.

This changes how brands evaluate success.

CTV measurement frameworks now combine exposure, engagement, and outcomes into a more complete understanding of campaign performance. Metrics like CPCV, view-through rate, incremental reach, and conversion activity help advertisers understand not only who saw an ad, but whether that exposure created meaningful impact.

At the same time, the ecosystem still faces challenges around standardization, deduplication, and cross-platform attribution. As streaming environments continue to fragment, advertisers increasingly rely on unified measurement frameworks, identity solutions, and interoperable datasets to create a more consistent view of performance.

The combination of targeting and measurement also improves optimization. Campaigns can evolve dynamically based on performance signals, allowing advertisers to adjust strategies while campaigns are still running rather than relying entirely on post-campaign analysis.

In many ways, CTV transformed television from a largely estimated medium into a more accountable one.

For a deeper look at how performance frameworks are evolving across streaming environments, explore Closing the CTV Measurement Gap: Data Quality & Performance Talks and How to Measure Connected TV Ad Performance.

Attention Became More Intentional

One of the most important shifts in connected TV advertising is not just technological. It is behavioral.

Linear television often operated as background media. CTV environments are different because viewers actively choose content across streaming platforms, creating more intentional viewing experiences. That attention carries significant value for advertisers.

Because CTV is typically consumed in lean-back, full-screen environments, advertisers increasingly evaluate attention signals alongside traditional reach metrics. Completion rates on CTV are often higher than standard digital video, while intentional viewing behavior can contribute to stronger ad recall and engagement.

This is also where contextual alignment becomes more important.

As identity-based targeting becomes more restricted across the advertising ecosystem, advertisers are increasingly turning to contextual and content-based signals within CTV environments. Rather than relying solely on personal identifiers, campaigns can align with the themes, tone, and viewing environment surrounding the content itself.

The result is a stronger balance between relevance, performance, and user experience.

The Fragmentation Challenge

The evolution of CTV targeting also introduced new complexity.

The ecosystem remains fragmented across platforms, publishers, devices, operating systems, and identity frameworks. Data exists in multiple environments, measurement standards vary, and advertisers often struggle to unify signals across screens.

This fragmentation creates challenges around:

• frequency management
• attribution consistency
• identity resolution
• cross-platform reporting
• incremental reach analysis

As a result, the industry is increasingly investing in unified measurement frameworks, clean room environments, contextual intelligence, and privacy-safe identity solutions that help advertisers connect performance signals more effectively.

AI is also playing a growing role in helping advertisers navigate this complexity. AI-driven contextual systems are increasingly being used to interpret content, viewing behavior, emotional alignment, and consumption patterns in near real time, helping advertisers improve relevance while maintaining privacy-safe approaches to targeting.

For publishers, this creates both pressure and opportunity.

Premium publishers with strong metadata, high-quality content environments, and richer contextual signals are becoming more valuable partners within the CTV ecosystem. As advertisers prioritize transparency, suitability, and measurable outcomes, publishers capable of delivering stronger audience understanding gain a competitive advantage.

This evolution is also reshaping programmatic buying models. Learn more in How Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) Are Reshaping CTV And What Publishers Need To Know.

Where CTV Advertising Goes Next

CTV is no longer simply the digital version of television.

As the ecosystem matures, advertisers will continue shifting from broad reach strategies toward more adaptive, signal-based planning approaches that prioritize relevance, accountability, and measurable outcomes.

The next phase of connected TV advertising will likely depend on how effectively the industry solves fragmentation while maintaining privacy-safe personalization and transparency across platforms.

But one thing is already clear. CTV targeting did not just improve television advertising. It fundamentally changed how television itself is bought, measured, optimized, and monetized.

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Media planning and activation are being rebuilt in real time. Not because marketers suddenly changed how they think about audiences, but because the system they relied on to reach them no longer behaves the way it used to.

Signals are still present across the digital market, but they no longer form a stable foundation. They are fragmented and increasingly difficult to connect into something reliable. What once felt like a structured process now feels increasingly disjointed, with audience definition, media platforms, and activation no longer fully aligned.

Part of this shift is technical, but a larger part of it is structural. Across major global markets, privacy-first regulation and platform-level changes are redefining how data can be collected and used. What was once a stable identity layer is now constrained by design, not just by decay.

Even if signal fragmentation were not a factor, this shift alone would fundamentally limit how identity-based media planning can operate.

For media planners, this creates a quiet but persistent tension.

There is more data available than ever before, yet less certainty about what that data represents. Planning becomes more complex, while execution becomes more reactive. The connection between strategy and outcomes starts to weaken.

Underneath that tension sits a deeper issue.

The foundation behind most media buying platforms and ad exchange environments was never designed to understand what it delivers. It was built to move impressions efficiently, not to interpret the context in which those impressions appear.

As long as identity signals were stable, that limitation was easy to overlook. Now it is becoming central to how media planning and strategy work.

Because when signals fragment, the system has no fallback. It cannot explain what it is buying. It cannot adapt to what is missing. And it cannot fully support the kind of decisions modern media strategies require.

This is where the shift begins. Not with more data, but with a different way of understanding the moment in which attention happens.

Key Takeaways

• Media planning and strategy are shifting from identity-based targeting to a foundation built on understanding the moment
• Fragmented signals are exposing the limits of traditional media buying platforms and ad exchange models
• Contextual media planning strategy is evolving from classification to true content understanding
• NeuroX introduces a new foundation where every impression is understood through interest, emotion, and intent
• The future of media strategies depends on aligning planning, activation, and measurement through consistent intelligence

When Media Planning Outgrows Its Foundation

For years, media planning followed a clear and familiar logic.

Planning is the process of defining who you want to reach, mapping those audiences across media channels, and activating campaigns through media buying platforms that deliver scale and efficiency. That approach shaped how effective media plans were built and how media spend was distributed across digital media environments.

It worked because identity made it work.

Audience segments could be defined, tracked, and activated with a level of consistency that connected planning to execution. Media planners and media buyers operated within the same system, even if their roles were different.

But as identity becomes less reliable, that system begins to lose coherence.

Signals vary by region, by platform, and by environment. In some markets, they are increasingly restricted by regulation. In others, they still exist but require multiple layers of data stitching to become usable. What once felt like a stable foundation now introduces variability at every stage of the workflow.

This is why building a media plan today often feels more complicated than it should. The system has not been redesigned. It has been extended. And that extension is starting to show its limits.

The Return of Context, and Its Limitations

As identity weakens, contextual media planning strategy has moved back into focus.

But the way contextual is implemented today often reflects the same limitations it is trying to solve.

Most contextual systems still rely on classification. Content is labeled, categorized, and grouped into predefined structures. That allows campaigns to expand beyond identity, but it does not fundamentally change how media strategies are built.

Because classification is not the same as comprehension.

Knowing what a piece of content is about does not explain why someone is engaging with it. It does not capture the mindset of the reader, the emotional tone of the content, or the stage of decision-making that defines how a message will be received.

This is where traditional contextual approaches reach their limit. They provide information, but do not understand.

For media planning and activation, that distinction matters. This is where our Neuro-Contextual approach becomes critical. Moving beyond basic classification, this method uses Liz, our proprietary AI, to interpret interest, emotion, and intent within the content itself. Unlike standard systems that just label a page, Neuro-Contextual advertising is built on how the brain actually processes content and advertising. Without that depth, even well-structured media strategies struggle to maintain precision across execution

Where Planning and Media Buying Begin to Drift

The impact of this limitation becomes more visible when looking at planning vs media buying.

Media planning sets direction. It defines priorities, allocates media spend, and determines how audiences should be reached across media channels.

Media buying translates that strategy into execution. It operates within the constraints of media platforms, optimizing campaigns based on performance signals and available inventory.

When identity-based signals like cookies and device IDs are stable, the connection holds. However, as identity signals break down and become inconsistent, planning and execution begin to drift. NeuroX addresses this structural challenge by embedding intelligence directly into the exchange, ensuring every impression is fully decoded and understood even when identity is absent. 

Audience definitions lose clarity as they move into activation. Campaign optimization becomes dependent on surface-level signals rather than underlying context. Performance becomes harder to interpret because the system cannot fully explain why certain outcomes occur. Over time, this creates a disconnect.

The signals used to build a good media plan are not always the same signals used to activate it. And the insights generated during execution do not always feed back into strategy in a meaningful way. This is not simply a workflow challenge. It is a limitation of the foundation itself.

A New Foundation for Media Planning and Strategy

NeuroX has actually been the engine powering Seedtag since 2018. While it has always been our core infrastructure, we are now externalizing it to give agencies direct programmatic access on their own terms. This is more than just a new product; it is a shift toward a more resilient infrastructure that makes every impression addressable via Neuro-Contextual targeting, regardless of whether identity signals are present in the bidstream.

Rather than adding another layer to an already complex system, it changes what the system is built on at its foundation.

NeuroX is Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual Exchange, where understanding is embedded directly into the system.

Every impression is interpreted before it enters the auction. That interpretation is powered by Liz, our proprietary AI, which decodes the interest, emotion, and intent expressed in content. And this changes how impressions are valued.

They are no longer dependent on identity to become addressable. They are understood in context, which allows them to be activated with clarity, even when identity signals are inconsistent or absent.

It also creates something the current system struggles to deliver: consistency at scale. By making impressions usable regardless of identity, NeuroX unlocks incremental, addressable reach across both the open web and CTV environments, while maintaining the level of precision modern campaigns require.

For media planners, this creates a different starting point. Planning no longer begins with assumptions about who the audience is. It begins with an understanding of the moment in which attention is happening, and what that moment reveals about intent and relevance.

When Understanding Connects Planning and Activation

When understanding becomes part of the foundation, media planning and strategy begin to behave differently.

The relationship between planning and execution becomes more direct. The signals used to define audiences are the same signals used to activate campaigns. The transition from strategy to execution becomes less dependent on translation and more grounded in continuity. 

This has practical implications. Media planners can build more coherent strategies because the inputs are more stable. Media buyers can execute with greater precision because the signals they rely on are embedded in the supply itself. Measurement becomes more meaningful because performance can be interpreted in context, not just in isolation.

Across media channels, this approach creates alignment. 

Whether campaigns run across web or CTV environments, the same intelligence layer applies. This allows media strategies to scale without losing coherence, even as the ecosystem becomes more complex.

Over time, this reduces one of the most persistent challenges in digital media: the gap between what is planned and what is delivered begins to close.

What Changes for Advertisers

As this shift takes hold, expectations around media planning and strategy are evolving.

A good media plan is no longer defined only by how efficiently it distributes media spend across channels. It is defined by how well it connects understanding, activation, and outcomes into a single system.

This changes how media platforms are evaluated. It is no longer enough to ask how much inventory a platform can deliver. The more important question is whether that inventory is understood, and whether that understanding can translate into better decisions across the workflow.

Flexibility remains important, but in a different way. It is not about adding more tools. It is about ensuring that the same intelligence can be accessed across different activation models, whether through open marketplace buying, curated deals, or managed service.

Most importantly, it requires alignment. The signals used to define audiences, activate campaigns, and measure performance need to be consistent. Without that consistency, even the most advanced media strategies struggle to deliver predictable outcomes.

From Automation to Understanding

At the same time, the industry is evolving toward more automated systems.

If you are exploring this shift, it is worth understanding What is Agentic AI and how it is shaping the way campaigns are planned and executed.

But automation alone does not resolve the underlying challenge. Without a foundation of understanding, automation simply accelerates existing limitations.

This shift is why the externalization of NeuroX is such a pivotal moment. By embedding Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual AI directly into the exchange, we ensure that every impression is fully decoded and understood before the auction even begins. It is this NeuroX exchange architecture, where intelligence is the operating system rather than a bolt-on filter, that provides the consistent foundation needed to bridge the gap between strategy and real-world outcomes.

Where Media Planning and Strategy Go Next

Media planning has always been about making decisions with incomplete information. What is changing is how those decisions are informed.

In a fragmented ecosystem, where identity signals are inconsistent, and the digital market continues to evolve, the advantage no longer comes from access to more data. 

It comes from understanding: understanding the content, understanding the moment, and understanding how people think, feel, and decide within that moment.

This is the shift that is redefining media planning and strategy. Not from one signal to another, but from signals to meaning.

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Every four years, the FIFA World Cup becomes more than a tournament. It becomes a global cultural moment where attention intensifies, emotions rise, and audiences engage across platforms, content, and conversations.

In 2026, World Cup advertising is no longer about being seen. It is about understanding what people are doing and feeling in the moment.

Fans are not just watching matches. They are reading stories, following players, reacting in real time, and engaging with content that reflects how they feel as the 2026 football World Cup unfolds. Attention is no longer fixed. It moves, builds, and shifts depending on context, emotion, and timing.

To help brands better understand how fans behave during the tournament, we created the World Cup Intelligence Arena. It brings together insights across markets and verticals to show what fans care about and how they engage throughout the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Because in today’s landscape, understanding attention has become the priority.

Key Takeaways

• World Cup advertising in 2026 is driven by moments, not just reach
• Fans engage across football, culture, and adjacent content ecosystems
• Emotional signals shape how audiences consume and respond to content
• Attention peaks during key stages but is influenced by narrative and context
• Effective strategies align with interest, emotion, and intent in real time

From Global Reach to Contextual Relevance

The FIFA World Cup has always been one of the most powerful sports events in the world. For advertisers, it has traditionally represented scale, offering unmatched reach through live broadcasts and mass audiences.

But the dynamics of World Cup advertising are changing.

The 2026 football World Cup will still deliver scale, but scale alone does not guarantee impact. As our insights show, visibility without strategy becomes noise in an environment where attention is constantly shifting.

Fans today engage with the tournament across multiple touchpoints. They move between live matches, news articles, social media world cups conversations, and cultural content. Their journey is continuous and non-linear.

This shift requires a new approach.

Instead of focusing only on exposure, brands must focus on relevance. That means understanding what fans are doing, where they are spending time, and how their mindset evolves across the tournament.

What Will Fans Care About During the FIFA World Cup 2026?

One of the most important insights for World Cup advertising trends 2026 is that fan attention extends far beyond the match itself.

Football remains the dominant driver, accounting for more than 90% of visits to World Cup-related content. However, this attention is layered with a wider set of interests that shape how audiences interact with the tournament.

Fans follow domestic leagues, transfer updates, and national team performance throughout the year. These ongoing narratives build familiarity and keep audiences engaged long before kickoff and long after the final.

At the same time, attention expands into adjacent areas such as celebrity culture, multisport events, and lifestyle content. These connections transform the FIFA World Cup into a broader cultural moment that reaches beyond traditional football audiences.

This is what makes the tournament unique. It is not just a sporting event. It is a connected ecosystem where culture, media, and entertainment intersect.

For brands, this creates new opportunities to connect with audiences in environments where engagement is already active.

The Role of Emotion in World Cup Advertising

If interest explains what captures attention, emotion explains what makes it matter.

The FIFA World Cup is driven by a range of emotional signals, from excitement and curiosity to admiration and optimism. Among these, excitement stands out as the most powerful driver, particularly during key moments of anticipation and match progression.

However, emotional responses are not static. They evolve throughout the tournament and vary across markets. Moments of pride, tension, or even disappointment can generate strong engagement, shaping how audiences consume content and respond to messaging.

This has important implications for World Cup advertising. It is no longer enough to align ads with content categories or keywords. Brands must align with the emotional context of each moment.

When messaging reflects how people feel, it becomes more relevant, more engaging, and more effective.

When Moments Matter Most

Attention during the FIFA World Cup builds around moments of intensity.

Data from previous tournaments shows clear spikes during key stages such as knockout rounds and high-tension matches. These moments can drive significant increases in traffic and interaction compared to regular periods.

However, these peaks are not driven by match outcomes alone. Narratives play a central role. Fans engage with player stories, personal journeys, and cultural conversations that extend beyond the game itself. In many cases, these stories generate as much attention as the matches themselves.

This reinforces a critical point. World Cup advertising trends 2026 are shaped by meaning, not just by events. Brands that recognize this can position themselves within the moments that matter most, instead of reacting after the fact.

How to Build a World Cup Advertising Strategy

Building an effective World Cup advertising strategy in 2026 requires a shift from static planning to dynamic understanding.

The first step is identifying where meaningful engagement happens. This involves focusing on environments where audiences are actively interested, rather than simply present.

Creative also needs to evolve. Messaging should reflect both the content and the mindset of the audience. When creative aligns with context, it feels more natural and resonates more strongly.

Another critical element is intent. Not all interactions carry the same value. By identifying signals of genuine engagement, brands can focus on moments where audiences are more likely to take action.

Finally, measurement must go beyond traditional metrics. Attention, brand impact, and engagement provide a clearer picture of how campaigns perform during the tournament.

Together, these elements create a more responsive and effective approach to World Cup advertising.

From Attention to Advantage With Neuro-Contextual Advertising

At the core of this approach is Liz, our Neuro-Contextual AI. 

Liz is designed to interpret deeper signals of interest, emotion, and intent by analyzing content meaning and audience behavior in real time. Rather than relying on keywords or predefined categories, she focuses on understanding why people engage with content in specific moments.

This shift changes how World Cup advertising works.

Instead of targeting audiences based on static profiles, brands can align with the context people are in and the mindset they bring to it. Whether fans are following match analysis, exploring player stories, or engaging with cultural conversations around the tournament, Liz helps identify the signals that define those moments.

This makes it possible to move beyond visibility and into relevance.

In the context of global sports events like the FIFA World Cup, where attention is constantly evolving, this level of understanding allows brands to respond with greater precision and connect when audiences are most receptive.

Inside the World Cup Intelligence Arena

These insights come together in the World Cup Intelligence Arena.

The Arena brings together 14 insight decks across markets and verticals, offering a detailed view of how fans behave in different contexts throughout the FIFA World Cup 2026. It highlights what audiences care about, how their interests evolve, and how engagement shifts across the tournament.

By combining multi-market analysis with real-time signals, the Arena provides a clearer picture of where attention is building and how it connects to fan behavior.

This allows brands to move from observation to action. Instead of relying on assumptions, they can plan and activate based on how audiences actually engage during the tournament, identifying the moments that matter and responding with greater confidence.

Where World Cup Advertising Goes Next

The FIFA World Cup 2026 marks a shift in how World Cup advertising works. It is no longer defined by reach alone. It is defined by the ability to understand attention as it forms, evolves, and peaks throughout the tournament.

The World Cup Intelligence Arena reflects this shift, helping brands move from visibility to relevance, and from presence to impact.

Because in the end, success in World Cup advertising is not about being seen.
It is about being understood.

Explore the World Cup Intelligence Arena

To go deeper into these insights, explore the World Cup Intelligence Arena, where 14 insight decks across markets and verticals reveal how fans think, feel, and engage throughout the FIFA World Cup 2026.

From emerging passion points to emotional signals and real-time engagement patterns, the Arena is designed to help brands turn insight into action while attention is still in play.

→ Explore the World Cup Intelligence Arena and download the insights

Between November 2025 and March 2026, virtually every major advertising platform launched an AI agent. The term dominated CES 2026, took over IAB ALM, and even prompted AdExchanger to launch a dedicated new conference called Programmatic AI in 2026, alongside its flagship Programmatic I/O. If you only read the press releases, you would think the entire advertising ecosystem has been reinvented overnight.

The reality is more nuanced and more interesting. A lot of what is being called “agentic” today is not. But something genuinely important is happening underneath the hype. And the companies that understand the difference between relabeling automation and building real intelligence will be the ones that define what comes next.

Key Takeaways

• Not all AI agents are truly agentic. Much of what is being called agentic today is not, and understanding the difference between relabeling automation and building real intelligence is critical.
• The industry is entering an “agentwashing” phase. Many vendors are rebranding existing capabilities as agentic, even though fewer than 130 companies today demonstrate real agentic capabilities. 
• A true agent goes beyond interface and automation. A genuine agent can take a campaign brief, reason about context and audience signals, build a strategy, identify what is missing, and prepare it for activation within a single workflow. 
• The real shift is happening at the intelligence layer. The programmatic ecosystem is being restructured around AI agents, but long-term value will come from understanding context, content, and what drives attention, not just infrastructure.

The biggest gap is understanding the moment, not automating tasks. Most AI systems can optimize and execute, but they struggle to explain why something works, especially how content and context shape human attention and response.

The Agentic Gold Rush

To understand the current moment, it helps to look back at the timeline.

In the span of five months, the industry saw a wave of product launches all claiming the agentic label. Major DSPs introduced AI-powered campaign creation tools. Verification companies added agent-based planning features. Commerce platforms launched recommendation services designed to power AI shopping assistants. Microsoft shut down its Xandr DSP, replacing it with a Copilot-powered buying interface, consolidated under the Microsoft Advertising Platform. This was an explicit bet that the traditional DSP model is becoming obsolete.

The pace is striking. But pace alone does not equal progress.

Gartner has already warned the industry about what it calls agentwashing, the rebranding of existing products without substantial agentic capabilities. Their prediction is sobering. Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to escalating costs, unclear value, or inadequate risk controls. Forrester calls 2026 a year of reckoning, noting that buyers are now seeking proof over promises.

This is the context in which any honest conversation about AI agents in digital advertising needs to take place.

What "agentic" actually means - and what it does not

The word agent is being used to describe at least three different things, and conflating them is making it hard to have an honest conversation about where the industry actually stands.

If you are asking, “What is Agentic AI”, the answer starts here.

The first is genuine agentic AI systems, which can receive an objective, break it into steps, make decisions, use tools, and adapt based on what they find, without a human directing each action. These systems don't just respond; they pursue a goal across a workflow.

The second is LLM-enhanced tooling. These are interfaces powered by large language models that make existing platforms more accessible and easier to use. You describe what you want, and the system translates it into actions. Faster than manual setup, genuinely useful, but the intelligence is mostly in the interface, not in any autonomous reasoning.

The third is rebranded machine learning. Bid optimization, predictive targeting, and budget pacing have existed for years. Today, many of these AI systems are simply being relabeled as agentic because the market rewards them.

A genuine agent can take a campaign brief, reason about context and audience signals, build a strategy, identify what’s missing, and prepare it for activation, all within a single workflow, with minimal human intervention at each step. An LLM wrapper helps you navigate a platform faster. 

Both have value. Treating them as equivalent is how “agentwashing” happens, and why Gartner estimates that of the thousands of vendors claiming agentic capabilities today, fewer than 130 are the real thing.

The Infrastructure Fight that Matters More Than the Product Launches

While the industry debates product features, a quieter but more consequential battle is playing out at the protocol layer.

Two camps are working to define how AI agents should communicate in advertising. On one side, the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), backed by Yahoo, PubMatic, Scope3, Magnite, and roughly twenty other companies, builds new, purpose-built schemas on top of emerging agent-to-agent standards, with interoperability designed from the start. On the other hand, IAB Tech Lab's Agentic RTB Framework (ARTF) extends existing programmatic standards like OpenRTB and OpenDirect, arguing that a decade of infrastructure should not be discarded. ARTF's containerized architecture is designed to reduce bid latency by up to 80%, not by replacing the stack, but by making it dramatically faster and more agent-friendly.

Both approaches have merit, and they are not mutually exclusive. What they share is a common bet: that the programmatic ecosystem will not be replaced by agentic AI, but restructured around it. The pipes will get smarter. The question is what flows through them.

This is where the economic tension becomes real. Infrastructure that simply routes transactions is under pressure. Intelligence that makes those transactions better, by understanding context, content, and what actually drives attention, becomes more valuable. An agent still needs to know where to buy. The hard problem is knowing why a placement is right and how to solve problems in real time.

At Seedtag, we are building Liz Agent to be protocol-agnostic, because the transport layer will converge regardless of which standard wins. What will not converge is a proprietary understanding of how content environments shape human attention and response. That is the layer that compounds over time. And it is the layer that makes an agent's recommendations worth acting on.

Why Context is Becoming the Foundation, Not the Alternative

Alongside the agentic wave, a deeper structural shift is reshaping what advertising intelligence actually means.

The global contextual advertising market has surged past $225 billion and is projected to reach between $380 and $468 billion by 2030, according to industry estimates from sources such as Statista and Fortune Business Insights. This is not a niche category. It is becoming the foundation of how advertising works. We have seen this firsthand. Seedtag was built without cookies from day one, so the shift everyone else is preparing for is one we have been operating in for over a decade.

The infrastructure that identity-based advertising relies on is disappearing from multiple directions simultaneously. Google killed Privacy Sandbox in October 2025 after the industry invested an estimated $2.3 billion preparing for cookie alternatives that never materialized, according to industry reports. 

Oracle abruptly shut down its entire advertising division, including Grapeshot, one of the largest contextual targeting platforms, redistributing hundreds of millions in annual spending. Third-party cookies survived in Chrome, but roughly 47% of the open internet is already unaddressable by traditional trackers, and Apple continues escalating with iOS 26, stripping platform-specific click identifiers from all browsing sessions.

But the bigger story is that technology has fundamentally changed. Contextual advertising is no longer keyword matching. Modern contextual systems use transformer-based models, computer vision, sentiment analysis, and deep learning to understand content at a semantic, emotional, and intent level. Many of these advancements are powered by generative AI and advanced artificial intelligence systems. The best systems classify content across thousands of categories, identify hundreds of objects and situational contexts in visual content, and process tens of millions of articles daily in real time.

The performance data increasingly support this shift. Research shows contextual targeting delivers significantly lower cost-per-click and cost-per-impression than behavioral approaches, with meaningfully better ad recall and engagement. Nearly 80% of consumers report being more comfortable with contextual ads than behavioral ones, according to multiple industry studies.

CTV is accelerating this further, with the industry moving from genre-level to program-level and even scene-level contextual analysis, a domain where identity-based approaches cover only a fraction of available inventory. It is why we have expanded our capabilities in CTV and partnered with platforms like IRIS.TV for content-level signals, building contextual intelligence natively into streaming, not bolting it on after the fact.

The Gap That Most AI Agents Still Cannot Close

Here is the honest assessment of where the industry stands.

Most AI systems in advertising, even the good ones, are optimized for efficiency. They process data faster, automate setup, and streamline execution. These systems perform tasks efficiently and can automate complex workflows. These are real gains. But they tend to operate on the surface of what makes advertising effective.

Relevance in modern advertising is not just about reaching the right person or placing an ad next to the right keyword. It depends on understanding the conditions of the moment, the cognitive and emotional context in which a message appears. How does the content around an ad shape the way that ad is perceived? What is the reader's mindset? Are they in a mode of exploration, comparison, or decision-making?

These are questions that standard optimization models, even sophisticated ones, are not designed to answer. 

They can tell you what is happening. They struggle with why it matters.

A concrete example: An optimization engine can tell you that a running shoe ad performed 40% better on a wellness article. It cannot tell you that the article was about training for a first marathon at 45, and readers were in a mindset of personal reinvention, which is why the message resonated.

This is where the combination of AI and contextual intelligence becomes genuinely differentiated. 

Not AI applied to the same data everyone else has, but AI applied to a proprietary understanding of how content environments shape human attention and response.

What We are Building with Liz Agent

So, where does Seedtag fit in all of this?

Seedtag was built from inception without cookies or personal identifiers. For over a decade, our engineering team has been developing Liz, a proprietary AI engine that processes over 60 million articles daily across 30,000+ publishers. 

Liz combines NLP, deep learning, computer vision, and sentiment analysis to understand content at a level that goes far beyond keyword matching or standard IAB taxonomy, thousands of contextual categories, hundreds of visual objects and situational contexts, across 10+ languages in real time.

Our Neuro-Contextual methodology takes this further. Working with Professor Moran Cerf at Columbia University, we used EEG measurements to study how context shapes cognitive processing. The results were concrete: 3.5x higher neural engagement versus non-contextual ads. A 30% lift versus standard contextual. A 26% increase in positive, approach-oriented emotional response.

Liz Agent, which we launched in February 2026, is our entry into the agentic AI system space. 

It is built on a multi-agent orchestration engine that combines LLMs with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework grounded in Seedtag's proprietary data. This allows the system to operate with strong human oversight while still enabling automation where it matters.

Let me explain why the RAG architecture matters. A lot of AI agents in advertising are built on generic LLMs. They are smart, but they do not know anything specific about contextual intelligence, content environments, or how audiences respond to different contexts. They can hallucinate. They generalize. They produce outputs that sound right but are not grounded in real data.

Liz Agent's RAG framework means every response, every insight, every recommendation, every strategic direction is grounded in our proprietary Neuro-Contextual data, not generic knowledge. When Liz Agent analyzes a campaign brief, it draws on a decade of contextual intelligence infrastructure and neuroscience research, not a pretrained model's best guess.

Through a conversational interface, we can move from insights to campaign activation within a single workflow. Liz Agent integrates directly with our proprietary data for real-time contextual and audience intelligence, leverages our models to turn content from our publisher network into real-time embeddings, extracting audience signals and competitive insights that are native to our ecosystem, not scraped from generic sources, and connects strategy directly to activation across our global inventory.

Our intelligence, our proprietary contextual data, our Neuro-Contextual methodology, and our decade of models are what make Liz Agent's outputs actually useful, not just fluent.

The Real Question for 2026

The industry is asking whether AI agents will transform advertising. I think that is the wrong question.

AI agents will compress workflows, make platforms more accessible, and automate tasks that currently consume disproportionate time. That much is certain. 

The better question is: what intelligence are these agents built on?

An agent built on generic data will produce generic outputs. An agent built on a deep, proprietary understanding of how content environments shape human attention and response will produce something qualitatively different. Not just faster answers, but better ones.

Forrester now includes agentic AI as a formal scoring criterion for advertising platforms. Gartner predicts 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% today. Meanwhile, the IAB's 2026 State of Data report found AI-improved measurement alone could unlock $26.3B in media investment.

The opportunity is real. But in a market flooded with agentwashing, the differentiation will not come from who has the best chatbot interface. It will come from those who have the deepest understanding of what actually drives relevance, and the AI architecture to act on it.

In a fragmented, privacy-first digital environment where nearly half of all inventory is already cookieless, relevance is no longer built on identity data. It is built on understanding the moment, the content, the context, and the cognitive and emotional conditions in which a message appears.

The question I would ask any vendor pitching you an AI agent: Show me the data it is grounded in.  If they cannot answer that, you are probably looking at a chatbot with a marketing budget.

In an industry defined by constant change, recognition doesn’t come from keeping up. It comes from redefining the way things are done.

I’m proud to share that Seedtag has been named a winner in the 2026 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards. Hosted by the Business Intelligence Group, this global program has spent more than a decade recognizing the companies and AI solutions that are redefining what responsible, results-driven artificial intelligence looks like in practice. This year’s awards brought together winners across 36 industries and more than 15 countries.

For me, Seedtag being named among this year’s AI awards winners is more than a milestone. It reflects a broader shift happening across advertising. Artificial intelligence is no longer just about automation or efficiency. It’s about understanding people more deeply, more responsibly, and in a more human way.

But the real story isn’t the award itself. It’s what it represents.

Key Takeaways

• AI awards are evolving to recognize AI solutions that prioritize human understanding, not just scale
• The most impactful AI solutions interpret context, emotion, and intent, not just data signals
• Artificial intelligence is shifting from automation to meaning, enabling more relevant and respectful advertising
• Neuro-Contextual AI reflects this new standard, aligning technology with how people think, feel, and decide
• The future of advertising is built on understanding the moment, moving from relevance to resonance

A New Standard for AI in Advertising

For years, AI in advertising has been associated with scale. More data. More signals. More optimization. But scale alone doesn’t create relevance.

What I’m seeing now, and what these AI awards are beginning to recognize, is a shift toward a different kind of AI solution. One that doesn’t just process information faster, but understands context with greater depth and nuance. One that moves beyond identifying patterns to interpreting meaning.

This is where artificial intelligence starts to feel less like a machine and more like a system designed around how people actually think, feel, and decide.‍

From Data Processing to Human Understanding

Traditional approaches to AI in advertising have relied heavily on categorization. Keywords, segments, and predefined audience groups.

But people don’t experience content in categories. They experience it in moments. That idea has shaped how we’ve built our technology from the very beginning.

Our Neuro-Contextual AI, Liz, was designed to move beyond static signals and into dynamic human understanding. It interprets interest, emotion, and intent across content environments to identify when someone is most receptive to a message.

Because relevance isn’t about reaching more people. It’s about reaching people in the right moment.

Intelligence Grounded in How People Think

I’ve always believed that technology reaches its full potential when it aligns with human behavior, not when it tries to override it.

That belief is what led us to develop our Neuro-Contextual approach. By combining neuroscience with advanced AI, we set out to create a more human-like understanding of content and context.

Instead of relying on who someone is, we focus on what matters in the moment:

• What captures attention
• What shapes emotional response
• What signals intent

From a technical perspective, this shift changes everything. When AI is built around human cognition, advertising stops feeling like an interruption and starts becoming part of the experience.

Innovation That Delivers Real Impact

Being recognized in these AI awards also reflects something I care deeply about. The need for measurable, meaningful impact.

Innovation alone isn’t enough. It has to perform.

That’s why our Neuro-Contextual approach has always been grounded in both science and results. Research shows that aligning advertising with human signals like interest, emotion, and intent drives stronger engagement and more positive responses.

At the same time, building an AI solution at a global scale comes with responsibility. Processing millions of signals across the open web and CTV while remaining privacy-first isn’t a feature. It’s a requirement.

That balance between intelligence, performance, and responsibility is what defines the next generation of AI solutions.

What This Means for the Future of Advertising

The future of advertising won’t be defined by how much data we can collect. It will be defined by how well we understand the moment.

For brands and agencies, this creates a real opportunity:

• To move from targeting audiences to understanding people
• To move from impressions to a real, human connection
• To move from relevance to resonance

And for the industry as a whole, it signals something bigger. A future where artificial intelligence doesn’t just optimize advertising. It elevates it.

Recognition is meaningful, but transformation is what truly matters. Being named among this year’s AI awards winners is a moment I’m proud of. More importantly, it reinforces the direction I believe the industry must take.

Toward AI solutions that are not only smarter, but also more human. Toward advertising that doesn’t just reach people, but understands them.

Because in the end, the most powerful technology isn’t the one that processes the most data. 

It’s the one that best understands people.

Publisher monetization has always been a balancing act. You want to protect the reader experience, protect advertiser trust, and still hit revenue goals in a market where demand signals shift fast. Now add falling search traffic, new AI discovery patterns, and brand safety rules that still default to blunt blocking. The margin for error gets thin.

In this episode of The PubWay Podcast, Mike and I sat down with Amanda Gomez, SVP of Revenue Operations and Ad Technology at the New York Post, to unpack how a modern news publisher is navigating that reality. We talked about how they’re thinking about the business beyond pageviews, why “more banner ads” is no longer a strategy, and what it takes to build a monetization engine that can hold up in an AI-shaped advertising ecosystem.

Below are the key takeaways, plus practical implications for publishers who are trying to protect revenue potential while keeping users and advertisers onside.

What publishers are optimizing for right now

A theme kept coming up in our conversation with Amanda. Publishers are not just future-proofing content. They are future-proofing the business model.

That means expanding beyond the written word into audio, video, podcasts, events, and product experiences that can withstand volatility in search and social distribution. It also means treating user experiences as a revenue input, not a nice-to-have. If your pages load slowly or feel overloaded, you lose user engagement. And with fewer pageviews to work with, every lost session costs more.

Amanda put it plainly: the days of “just add more 300x250s” are long gone. The goal now is to create an ad experience that earns attention without punishing the user.

What this looks like in practice

• Testing ad-light experiences on new launches to protect speed and session depth
  
• Measuring the trade-off between fewer ad units and stronger time on site
  
• Investing in owned channels like apps, newsletters, and direct return visits
  
• Building franchises in categories that drive consistent demand, like sports and entertainment

These aren’t just product decisions. They’re publisher monetization decisions.

What is a publisher monetization strategy?

A publisher monetization strategy is the plan a publisher uses to turn audience attention into sustainable revenue while protecting long-term user trust. In digital advertising, that typically includes how you price and package ad inventory, how you balance direct and programmatic demand, and how you design user experiences that support both engagement and advertising revenue.

In 2026, a strong monetization strategy usually includes:

• Inventory strategy: ad formats, ad density, and placement rules that protect speed and usability.
  
• Demand strategy: a mix of direct sold, programmatic, and curated deals to reduce volatility.
  
• Data driven decision-making: performance monitoring in real time across yield, latency, and engagement.
  
• Audience strategy: building loyalty through apps, newsletters, and repeat visitation.
  
• Revenue diversification: options like affiliate marketing, subscriptions, events, and sponsorships.

The big shift Amanda emphasized is that publishers can’t solve only for the page. They have to solve for the brand. If you’re building a media brand, you create more revenue opportunity across formats, not just within one URL.

Brand safety is still a revenue problem for news

When the conversation turned to brand safety in advertising, Amanda didn’t sugarcoat it. News publishers still face a constant uphill battle. Many buyers still rely on legacy keyword blocklists because they’re easy. They feel “safe.” But they are also blunt. They can misread context, ignore sentiment, and block coverage that is responsible, balanced, and high quality.

Amanda gave a strong example. Coverage around a death can include a lot of positive sentiment. Think tributes, community response, and gratitude. Yet many systems see the word “died” and flag the page. That creates a direct brand safety in advertising impact on publisher monetization because premium impressions get excluded from bids, even when the content is clearly suitable.

The important nuance is this: brand safety is not just an advertiser setting. It shapes how the open web gets funded.

What buyers respond to now: suitability, sentiment, and proof

Amanda also shared something encouraging. Some advertisers are more open to testing than they used to be. Instead of shutting the door on “news,” buyers will engage when publishers can show side-by-side examples and prove that a page is suitable.

That proof often comes from three places:

• Sentiment and context signals that go beyond keywords.
  
• Performance data showing lift when content is correctly classified.
  
• Clear packaging that makes it easy for buyers to buy with confidence.
  

We also discussed how certain “negative” contexts can be highly relevant depending on the category. Insurance brands, home improvement retailers, and generator companies may want to appear near natural disaster content because it’s timely and useful. That is suitability in action. It’s not about avoiding reality. It’s about aligning message, moment, and audience need.

How do PMPs improve publisher monetization strategy while supporting brand safety in advertising?

Private Marketplace deals, or PMPs, help publishers and advertisers meet in the middle. They create a controlled path to premium demand while improving transparency and suitability.

Here’s why PMPs can strengthen a publisher monetization strategy:

1) They create cleaner buying paths

PMPs reduce the chaos of open exchange buying by defining who can buy, under what rules, and with what expectations. That stability improves revenue potential.

2) They support brand safety through structure, not fear

Instead of broad blocking, PMPs can be built around curated segments, contextual rules, and suitability standards. Advertisers get more control without punishing quality journalism.

3) They reward high quality environments

When buyers can see what they’re buying and why it works, CPMs tend to reflect that quality. PMPs can unlock advertising revenue that gets lost when inventory is treated as generic.

4) They protect user experiences

Because PMPs often favor premium placements and predictable demand, publishers can reduce the pressure to overload pages with units. That improves speed, reduces latency, and supports higher user engagement.

In short, PMPs can connect publishers and advertisers in a way that improves outcomes for both, while keeping the advertising ecosystem healthier overall.

Practical publisher monetization ideas from this episode

If you’re looking for publisher monetization ideas you can act on, Amanda’s playbook points to a few clear priorities:

• Start with user experience. Measure load, latency, and engagement like revenue drivers.
  
• Build strong “safe” content franchises (sports, entertainment) that are easy for buyers to fund.
  
• Use the app as a loyalty engine and a first-party channel for product experimentation.
  
• Treat AI as part of distribution and product, not just an editorial tool.
  
• Push suitability conversations with proof, not opinions. Examples and performance data change minds.
  

Looking ahead

Publishers are operating in a world where attention is scarce, discovery is changing, and monetization platforms must work harder to translate signal into value. What I took from this conversation is that the publishers who win will be the ones who stay flexible. They’ll protect user experiences, insist on smarter brand safety in advertising, and build demand paths that reward quality rather than penalize it.

Listen to the full episode of The PubWay Podcast to hear Amanda’s full perspective on balancing brand safety, user experience, and publisher monetization in a rapidly shifting market.

Every spring, March Madness becomes one of the most intense cultural moments in sports. The NCAA tournament delivers dramatic upsets, emotional fan reactions, and nonstop conversation across media platforms. But for marketers, the event represents more than a series of basketball games. It reveals how audiences gather around shared moments of excitement, competition, and entertainment.

The biggest March Madness trends in 2026 show that the tournament audience is far more complex than a single sports fan profile. Some viewers follow every bracket prediction and game analysis. Others tune in for the social experience of watching with friends. Many engage with the tournament through sports storytelling, entertainment content, and broader cultural conversations surrounding the games.

Our analysis shows that March Madness engagement spans 77 connected content genres, extending well beyond basketball coverage. Fans move between sports commentary, documentaries, entertainment programming, and lifestyle content as the tournament unfolds. This connected ecosystem reflects how the modern March Madness tournament audience experiences the event today.

For brands exploring March Madness marketing, understanding these behaviors is essential. Advertising success during the tournament does not come from simply appearing during games. It comes from aligning campaigns with the moments, emotions, and content environments that shape how fans engage with March Madness.

Below, we explore the biggest March Madness trends in 2026, how fan behavior is evolving, and what these changes mean for marketers planning March Madness advertising.

Key Takeaways

• The biggest March Madness trends in 2026 are driven by three core audience groups: Bracket Devotees, Watch Party Goers, and Cultural Lifestyle viewers.
• March Madness attention spans 77 different content genres, showing how the tournament extends far beyond basketball coverage.
• Key content clusters include sports documentaries, weekend sports discussion shows, entertainment programming, and college basketball analysis.
• Bracket Devotees represent nearly half of the March Madness ecosystem and respond strongly to bracket predictions and tournament analysis.
• Watch Party Goers engage with the tournament as a social viewing experience driven by group reactions and entertainment content.
• Cultural Lifestyle audiences follow March Madness through sports culture, storytelling, and broader media narratives.

What Are the Biggest March Madness Trends in 2026?

These insights highlight a major shift in March Madness audience trends. The tournament is no longer just about watching games. It has become a broader cultural moment shaped by emotion, context, and shared experiences.

One of the most important March Madness trends is the expansion of the tournament beyond basketball coverage.

Fans still follow the games closely. But the surrounding media ecosystem has grown significantly. Engagement now flows across sports documentaries, entertainment shows, sports commentary programs, and lifestyle content.

Four key content clusters dominate the conversation during the 2026 March Madness:

• Documentary sports storytelling
• Weekend sports discussions
• Entertainment and lifestyle programming
• College basketball analysis

These clusters reveal how fans engage with the tournament through multiple entry points.

Some viewers focus on bracket predictions and game matchups. Others watch sports documentaries or entertainment shows tied to the tournament atmosphere. Many participate in the broader cultural buzz surrounding the games.

This shift reflects evolving March Madness historical trends. In earlier years, fan engagement centered primarily on live games and sports news coverage. Today, March Madness exists within a much broader media ecosystem.

For marketers, this evolution creates new opportunities for March Madness advertising ideas. Brands can reach audiences across many contextual environments rather than relying only on live-game placements.

Why Does March Madness Attract Advertisers?

Few sporting events generate the same level of sustained attention as March Madness. The tournament runs for several weeks, creating multiple waves of engagement and conversation across media platforms.

This extended timeline is one reason March Madness sports marketing remains so valuable. The tournament produces several distinct engagement phases:

1. Early bracket speculation and predictions
2. Game-by-game tournament drama
3. Unexpected upsets and viral highlights
4. Final Four anticipation and championship momentum

Each phase generates fresh audience attention and new opportunities for brands.

Another reason March Madness attracts advertisers is the emotional intensity of the tournament. Every game carries the possibility of a surprise outcome. Fans experience a mix of excitement, tension, joy, and curiosity as the bracket unfolds.

These emotions drive attention. When audiences feel emotionally invested, they become more engaged with the surrounding content environment.

For marketers, this creates ideal conditions for March Madness advertising. Campaigns placed within emotionally aligned contexts feel more relevant and less disruptive to the viewing experience.

How Do Fan Behaviors Change During March Madness?

Understanding March Madness fan engagement requires recognizing that different audiences interact with the tournament in different ways.

Our analysis highlights three key audience segments shaping the March Madness ecosystem.

Each group approaches the tournament with a distinct motivation.

1. Bracket Devotees

Bracket Devotees represent the largest segment of the March Madness ecosystem.

These fans follow the tournament closely. They analyze matchups, track predictions, debate potential upsets, and monitor bracket outcomes throughout the competition.

This audience thrives on uncertainty. Every upset reshapes the bracket and fuels new discussions.

Because of this behavior, March Madness bracket trends remain one of the most important signals for marketers. Content focused on predictions, expert analysis, and tournament strategy attracts close attention from these viewers.

Advertising that aligns with competitive excitement and real-time tournament dynamics often resonates strongly with this group.

2. Watch Party Goers

Another important audience segment experiences March Madness primarily as a social event.

Watch Party Goers engage with the tournament through group viewing experiences. They gather with friends, react to big plays together, and follow live commentary across multiple screens.

Their viewing habits often include entertainment content and social discussions alongside the games themselves.

This behavior reflects a broader shift in March Madness audience trends. The tournament has become a shared cultural moment where sports, entertainment, and social interaction intersect.

For advertisers, this audience responds well to creative that reflects the energy and excitement of communal viewing.

3. Cultural Lifestyle Audiences

The third audience segment connects with March Madness through culture and storytelling.

These viewers are drawn to narratives surrounding players, sports documentaries, and broader conversations about athletes and competition.

They may not watch every game. But they remain engaged with the personalities and stories shaping the tournament.

This segment shows how March Madness 2026 extends beyond the bracket itself. The tournament generates cultural conversations that blend sports, entertainment, and storytelling.

For brands, this audience represents an opportunity to appear within narrative-driven environments rather than strictly sports-focused placements.

What Advertising Strategies Work During March Madness?

The most effective March Madness advertising strategies recognize that audiences respond to different types of content environments.

Rather than approaching the tournament as a single advertising moment, marketers should align campaigns with the motivations driving each audience group.

Align with competition-driven environments

Bracket Devotees respond strongly to programming that emphasizes tournament dynamics, predictions, and game analysis. Advertising placed within these contexts benefits from the excitement surrounding bracket outcomes.

Support the social viewing experience

Watch Party Goers engage with entertainment-driven programming and real-time commentary. Advertising within these environments can feel like a natural extension of the shared viewing experience.

Connect with sports storytelling

Cultural Lifestyle audiences respond to sports documentaries and narrative-driven content. These environments allow brands to align with curiosity and a deeper sports culture.

Across all audiences, the strongest March Madness advertising ideas share one important trait: they match the emotional tone of the surrounding content.

When advertising aligns with the context fans are already engaged in, it becomes more relevant and more memorable.

How Do Brands Use March Madness for Marketing?

Brands use the tournament to connect with audiences during one of the most emotionally engaging moments in sports.

Successful March Madness marketing strategies typically follow three key principles.

Contextual alignment

Campaigns perform best when they appear alongside content audiences are already consuming. During March Madness, this includes sports commentary, entertainment programming, and documentary storytelling related to the tournament.

Emotional relevance

March Madness engagement is driven by excitement, joy, and curiosity. Advertising that reflects these emotions resonates more strongly with fans.

Multi-environment presence

Because the tournament ecosystem spans dozens of connected content genres, brands can reach audiences across many contextual placements.

This broader approach allows marketers to move beyond traditional sports advertising and engage fans throughout the wider March Madness media environment.

The Biggest Lesson for Marketers

March Madness reveals an important insight about how modern audiences engage with sports events. The tournament does not revolve around a single type of fan. Instead, the ecosystem is shaped by multiple motivations:

• competition and bracket predictions
  
  
• social viewing experiences
  
  
• sports storytelling and cultural curiosity
  
  

Each of these motivations drives attention in different ways.

For marketers, the opportunity lies in understanding those differences. Campaigns that recognize the emotional and contextual diversity of the March Madness tournament audience can connect with fans more effectively.

March Madness will always be about basketball. But the tournament’s real power comes from the shared experiences it creates around the game.

Brands that understand those experiences are the ones most likely to win the moment.

To explore the full analysis behind these insights, including audience segments, contextual environments, and the signals shaping March Madness fan engagement, download the full March Madness report and discover how Seedtag helps brands turn cultural moments into more human and relevant advertising.

Seedtag, the global Neuro-Contextual advertising company, today announced 46% year-over-year growth in North America in 2025. The region’s strong acceleration was driven by deepening partnerships with major brands and agencies that continue to see measurable value in Seedtag’s custom contextual audiences, premium inventory access, and actionable cross-channel insights.

In the United States, Seedtag reported 35% year-over-year revenue growth in January 2026. In Canada, where operations launched in 2024, the business achieved profitability last year and remains Seedtag’s fastest-growing market, posting 325% year-over-year growth in January.

Expanding Brand Portfolio Across Key Verticals

Recent client additions span multiple industries:

• Financial Services: Discover Card, Charles Schwab, HSBC
  
  
• Travel: British Airways, Qantas, United Airlines
  
  
• Automotive: Infiniti, Toyota, Volkswagen, Acura
  
  
• FMCG: Keurig Dr Pepper, Colgate, Conagra, Henkel
  
  
• Healthcare: Merz, AbbVie, GSK, Galderma
  
  
• Retail & QSR: Red Lobster, Target, L.L.Bean, Amazon XCM/Retail
  
  

“The diversity of our brand roster brings stability to our business and underscores how critical contextual targeting has become in modern media planning,” Brian Danzis, Chief Revenue Officer at Seedtag. 

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Neuro-Contextual TV Momentum Accelerates

Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual TV solution continues to gain traction following the full integration of CTV sell-side platform Beachfront into its offering. With a presence that is both growing and recognized as a Top 15 CTV SSP by Jounce Media, Seedtag offers advertisers direct pathways to key inventory from Paramount, Samsung, Charter, LG, Scripps, among others.

Valerie Andari, Investment lead at Good Apple on Amneal Pharmaceuticals shares: "Seedtag brings a truly consultative approach to every campaign. Their ability to leverage AI-powered contextual insights helps us navigate complex healthcare audiences and uncover new opportunities to drive meaningful engagement."

Demand continues to surge, with 2025 CTV revenue growing 157% year over year. In January 2026 — traditionally one of the slowest months for streaming video — Seedtag continued to see triple-digit CTV growth.

Leah Askew, SVP, Head of Precision Media | Digitas NA, added: "Our partnership with Seedtag moves us beyond outdated demographics like '18–54' or 'moms' and into the world of deep audience intelligence. Their team digs beneath the surface of the RFP to uncover the nuanced motivations that actually drive consumer behavior. They function as an extension of our own team, serving as strategic partners who engage in the high-level industry dialogue necessary to keep our clients ahead of the curve."

Team Growth and Workforce Highlights

Seedtag’s North American team grew to well over 100+ employees in 2025, continuing the company’s rapid growth in the region. The workforce is increasingly diverse, with women representing 53% of employees and 63% of people managers. Employee engagement remains strong, with an NPS of 69, reflecting a motivated and committed team driving the company forward.

 “Seedtag’s strength lies in our connected ecosystem,” said Amanda Pui, VP Canada at Seedtag. “We’ve spent the last year intentionally scaling the successes of our colleagues in the US, LATAM and EMEA to benefit our Canadian partners. This cross-regional strategy allows us to provide global clients with a level of scale and sophisticated Neuro-Contextual data that is unmatched in the market.”

Looking Ahead

As demographic-based targeting declines in favor of interest-driven strategies, Seedtag is positioned to lead this transformation. The company empowers publishers seeking smarter monetization and brands looking to build more authentic, high-performance audience connections.

“We’ve truly only just begun,” Lora Feinman, SVP North America, said. “As marketers move away from legacy targeting methods, we’re building the infrastructure for the future of modern media planning. Along with identity and commerce data signals, Neuro-Contextual intelligence is a core component of the modern targeting trifecta. It’s privacy-compliant, grounded in interest, intent, and emotion — and built to scale.”

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The Oscars 2026 will be remembered for performances, speeches, and defining cultural moments. But beneath the spectacle of the 98th Academy Awards lies something more valuable for brands: a measurable pattern of concentrated attention.

Awards season does not generate broad, evenly distributed traffic. It creates sharp clusters of demand around specific films, names, and editorial environments. For marketers planning Oscars 2026 campaigns, understanding that architecture is the difference between seasonal presence and strategic impact.

The data behind this year’s Oscars insights, powered by Liz, our Neuro-Contextual AI and analyzed across our worldwide publisher network, makes that concentration unmistakable. It reveals where attention gathers, how it accelerates, and which cultural signals drive the strongest engagement.

Below, we break down the mechanics behind that concentration, the moments that matter most for marketers, and how brands can maximize reach during Academy Awards 2026.

Key Takeaways

• Attention during Oscars 2026 concentrates on a small number of high-performing films and articles.
• The nominations announcement triggers the first measurable spike in demand.
• A handful of films are driving disproportionate traffic across coverage.
• Star-level demand clusters around names like Timothée Chalamet, generating 36,601 visits during the analyzed period.
• The strongest strategy to maximize reach during Academy Awards 2026 is phase-based and context-aware.
• Winning campaigns move from share of voice to share of moment.

Attention Does Not Spread. It Concentrates.

One of the clearest patterns in our Oscars insights data is that traffic clusters tightly around a small number of titles.

During the analyzed period, from November 2025 through January 2026, the films stealing the spotlight were One Battle After Another with 53,013 total article visits, followed by Marty Supreme with 45,599 visits, Sinners with 40,838 visits, Frankenstein with 34,604 visits, and Hamnet, closing the top cluster with 32,544 visits.

These figures reflect measurable demand during the early phase of the 2026 awards season. They demonstrate that attention is not evenly distributed across all Oscars coverage. It narrows around specific titles that generate sustained editorial momentum.

Importantly, this surge does not happen in isolation. The broader awards season, spanning from November 2025 through March 15, 2026, includes multiple recognition milestones before culminating in the 98th Academy Awards. Each ceremony reinforces visibility around the same films, directors, and actors. As recognition builds, search behavior intensifies. Coverage compounds. Editorial momentum carries forward from one event to the next.

The live Oscars ceremony adds another layer to this concentration dynamic. Unscripted moments, surprise wins, acceptance speeches, and viral reactions can generate immediate traffic surges. A widely shared clip can redirect attention toward a specific film, category page, or performer profile within minutes. These microspikes do not replace the broader concentration pattern. They amplify it.

Taken together, this reveals the true structure of awards-season demand. Attention funnels toward specific titles and moments that generate both sustained and sudden editorial acceleration.

For marketers, this makes broad “Oscars” targeting inefficient. Cultural demand flows toward high-density hubs shaped by both scheduled milestones and live accelerators. Campaigns that align with those hubs inherit existing attention. 

The opportunity in Oscars 2026 ad ideas lies in identifying where that concentration is forming and activating within those environments.

The Nominations Moment Shapes Early Demand

The first measurable surge happens during the Oscar nominations announcement.

At this stage, audiences are comparing performances and revisiting films. Category coverage, including Actor in a Leading Role and Actress in a Supporting Role, becomes a central driver of traffic.

Within those clusters, individual names act as accelerators.

Timothée Chalamet generated 36,601 total visits during the analyzed period. Emma Stone followed with 27,162 visits, while Michael B. Jordan reached 25,927 and Jessie Buckley 24,308.

These numbers reinforce a critical insight. Oscar season demand is not generic. It is entity-driven. When specific actors trend within nomination coverage, traffic consolidates around related editorial environments.

For brands, the nominations phase represents an interest-driven window. Audiences are engaged in evaluation and discovery. Contextual alignment during this stage allows marketers to capture attention before the live ceremony compresses it further.

The Ceremony Compresses Attention

If nominations ignite curiosity, the ceremony compresses everything.

During the 98th Oscars, traffic moves rapidly between winner announcements, acceptance speeches, and real-time commentary. Coverage around high-performing films such as One Battle After Another or Marty Supreme intensifies as outcomes unfold.

The defining characteristic of this phase is velocity.

Live coverage surges quickly. Pages update in real time, and attention concentrates around those updates.

For brands aiming to maximize reach during Academy Awards 2026, this creates both opportunity and risk. The opportunity comes from attention density at its highest point. The risk comes from static planning that cannot adapt to reactive movement.

The most effective Academy Awards 2026 campaigns anticipate volatility. They align with high-traffic hubs rather than isolated placements.‍

Cultural Signals as Traffic Accelerators

The data confirms that individuals amplify attention density.

Timothée Chalamet’s 36,601 visits reflect more than celebrity appeal. His presence extends across performance coverage and broader entertainment media. Emma Stone’s 27,162 visits signal recurring awards-season relevance.

At the film level, Sinners and Frankenstein generated more than 40,000 and 34,000 visits, respectively. These figures reinforce the same pattern: a small number of entities capture a concentrated share of attention.

For marketers, these cultural signals function as contextual anchors.

You are not targeting individuals. You are aligning with environments where attention is already accelerating.

This distinction is crucial when developing Oscars 2026 campaigns. The strategic advantage lies in identifying high-density clusters and positioning creative within them.

What Is the Best Advertising Strategy for the Oscars 2026?

The best advertising strategy for the Oscars 2026 is phase-based and context-aware.

It recognizes that attention builds during the nominations announcement, accelerates across the awards season calendar, and peaks during the live ceremony on March 15, 2026.

Rather than increasing spend indiscriminately, brands should:

• Align with high-performing film clusters.
• Monitor entity-level demand signals.
• Activate during high-velocity editorial moments.
• Maintain contextual suitability across tonal variations.

Success depends less on total spend and more on strategy and precision.

This is where Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual approach becomes essential. Instead of targeting audiences based on who they are, Neuro-Contextual Advertising interprets what people are engaging with in the moment. It analyzes signals of interest, emotion, and intent expressed through content, enabling brands to align with how audiences are thinking and feeling during awards season.

During the Oscars 2026, that means understanding not just which film is trending, but why it resonates. Is the surge driven by anticipation, celebration, surprise, or debate? When campaigns align at that emotional level, they move from simple relevance to genuine resonance.

For brands and agencies, this shift transforms advertising from exposure into connection. By aligning creative with the cultural tone of high-density moments, campaigns become more human, more meaningful, and more effective. In a season defined by concentrated attention, making advertising human again is not a tagline. It is a strategic advantage.

How Can Brands Run Academy Awards 2026 Campaigns?

Running effective Academy Awards 2026 campaigns requires planning across the full attention cycle.

Early activation captures research-driven demand during Oscar nominations coverage. Live-event alignment leverages peak traffic concentration. Post-ceremony analysis extends cultural relevance beyond the broadcast moment.

Across each phase, the objective remains consistent: align with environments where attention and emotion reinforce brand intent.

Neuro-Contextual approach supports this by continuously analyzing content signals at scale. By interpreting interest, emotion, and intent in real time, brands can position creative within high-density moments without relying on personal data. The result is campaigns that adapt to cultural momentum rather than react to it.

You can explore deeper seasonal intelligence and cultural trend analysis in Seedtag Insights.

From Share of Voice to Share of Moment

Seasonal campaigns often focus on share of voice. The Oscars illustrate why that metric does not capture the full context of how people think, feel, and decide.

Share of voice measures visibility. It tells you how often your brand appears. But it does not explain where attention concentrates, how emotion shifts, or why certain moments accelerate engagement.

During awards season, attention does not distribute evenly. When One Battle After Another drives 53,013 visits and Timothée Chalamet generates 36,601, traffic clearly funnels toward specific titles and personalities. Cultural demand forms around peaks.

That changes the question marketers should be asking.

Success during the Oscars 2026 depends on whether a brand is present during those peaks, not simply during the broader season.

Was your campaign aligned with the highest-performing film clusters?
Did it activate during nomination-driven surges?
Was it positioned within live ceremony updates when attention intensified?

This is the shift from share of voice to share of moment.

The 98th Academy Awards are more than a celebration of film. They are a blueprint for how digital attention behaves during high-intensity cultural events. Brands that understand this concentration effect, and align with interest, emotion, and intent rather than audience labels, can turn cultural relevance into measurable performance.

That is what marketers need to know about the Oscars 2026.

Video marketing solutions are changing as Connected TV reshapes how video advertising is planned, activated, and measured. With televisions now operating as connected, addressable environments, brands have access to digital-style capabilities within an ecosystem historically defined by reach and frequency.

In Episode 29 of The Pub Way Podcast, Tina and I sat down with Mike Brooks, Global Head of Business Development and Partnerships at LG Ad Solutions, to unpack what is really happening inside the CTV advertising ecosystem. We focused on three areas in particular: ecosystem structure, measurement integration, and the emergence of new formats within OEM operating systems.

One theme became clear as we talked. CTV is not behaving like traditional linear television, and it is not simply an extension of digital video. It is becoming a foundational video marketing solution, one that starts with environment and scale, then layers in measurement through a growing network of integrations rather than relying on a single tracking model.

Below are the core insights from the episode that help explain why CTV is playing a larger role in modern video marketing strategies.

Key Takeaways

• CTV advertising operates in a fundamentally different ecosystem than digital video, favoring concentration and scale over fragmentation.
  
• OEM platforms approach video advertising from the screen outward, starting with environment and reach rather than content libraries.
  
• Measurement in CTV is built through multiple one-to-one integrations, not a shared tracking language.
  
• Native advertising on TV home screens is a newer format that has only recently become accessible to the broader advertising market, expanding and maturing what video advertising can look like inside the TV experience.
  
• CTV is increasingly capable of supporting both reach and performance as measurement and attribution continue to mature.

How Does CTV Advertising Enhance Video Marketing Solutions Strategy?

One of the biggest differences between open-web video advertising and CTV advertising is how the ecosystem is structured. Digital video lives across thousands of websites and apps. CTV, by contrast, is concentrated across a much smaller number of platforms that each operate at a massive scale.

That concentration changes how video marketing solutions are deployed. Instead of managing campaigns across fragmented inventory, brands can activate video advertising within a limited set of environments that reach millions of screens. The result is greater focus, consistency, and access to high-quality video placements designed to capture attention.

What also stood out to me is how CTV has begun to adopt a more performance-aware mindset. Linear TV historically offered limited flexibility when it came to targeting and measurement. Connected TV now supports attribution and clearer insight into video performance that simply did not exist before. This shift is still unfolding, but it is already influencing how TV inventory is bought, evaluated, and optimized.

Why Choose CTV Advertising for Video Marketing Solutions?

For years, video marketing strategies forced a clear tradeoff. Linear TV delivered reach. Digital video delivered measurable performance. CTV is narrowing that divide.

Much of today’s CTV demand still originates from linear budgets built around reach and frequency. What has changed is what can now be layered on top. Measurement partners, attribution frameworks, and intelligent video solutions are expanding what CTV can deliver beyond awareness alone.

Scale remains central to this story. OEM platforms control the operating systems of connected televisions, which gives them direct access to hundreds of millions of screens globally. That scale allows brands to launch campaigns efficiently across regions.

For advertisers looking to Advertise on CTV, the combination of scale, environment control, and integrated measurement makes CTV difficult to replicate with other video marketing tools.

Learn More about CTV Advertising

1. How to Measure Connected TV Ad Performance 
2. How Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) Are Reshaping CTV And What Publishers Need To Know
3. Closing the CTV Measurement Gap: Data Quality & Performance Talks

How to Improve Video Marketing Solutions Using CTV

Improving video marketing solutions using CTV starts with how measurement is structured. In the episode, one of the defining characteristics of the CTV ecosystem is that it does not operate on a single, shared tracking system. Unlike mobile and web environments that rely on unified identifiers, CTV measurement is built through a network of one-to-one integrations.

OEM platforms work with multiple attribution and reporting partners, allowing campaigns to be evaluated using familiar performance frameworks. This integration model makes it possible to connect CTV advertising with broader media measurement strategies rather than isolating it as a separate channel.

What stood out to me is that this approach improves video marketing solutions by aligning television with existing reporting structures. Measurement is layered onto the TV environment in a way that reflects how it actually functions. For brands, that creates clearer performance visibility while preserving the scale and environment advantages that make CTV distinct.

Intelligent Video Solutions and Native CTV Formats

One of the most distinctive parts of the CTV ecosystem is native advertising on TV home screens. These placements live inside the operating system itself and appear the moment a viewer turns on their TV.

What makes these formats different is timing. Native placements show up before content selection, which sets them apart from traditional pre-roll video ads. They create a new entry point for brand visibility, product discovery, and navigation to landing pages or video hosting environments.

As discussed in the episode, this inventory has only recently become available to the broader advertising market and is now reaching wider programmatic access. That shift marks an important moment in how video advertising can show up within the TV experience.

Why Connected TV Advertising Is Better Than Other Video Marketing Solutions

So, What is CTV Advertising delivering that other video channels do not? To answer that, it helps to compare structural models.

Linear television delivers massive scale but historically operates with limited integration into digital attribution systems. Social video platforms and environments like YouTube offer targeting flexibility and performance signals, but function within closed ecosystems where optimization occurs at the platform level. Open-web video operates across fragmented placements.

CTV sits between these models.

It preserves the scale and shared viewing environment of television while introducing integration-based measurement through OEM platforms. Instead of relying on a single tracking system, CTV connects to multiple attribution and reporting partners. That allows campaigns to align more directly with broader media evaluation frameworks.

OEM environments also operate across fewer, larger platforms compared to the open web. That concentration reduces fragmentation while maintaining reach and placement control.

For brands evaluating video marketing solutions, this structural balance is what makes CTV better. It allows marketers to combine scale, environment integrity, and measurable performance within a single channel. While measurement continues to mature, CTV is no longer limited to awareness alone.

Looking Ahead: The Role of CTV in Video Marketing Solutions

Video marketing is no longer defined by a strict choice between linear TV and digital video. As Connected TV continues to mature, it is becoming a central part of how brands plan, execute, and evaluate video advertising.

CTV advertising allows marketers to start with environment and scale, then layer in measurement through partnerships and integrations. For brands evaluating the next generation of video marketing tools, CTV is not simply an extension of television. It is a distinct and increasingly essential part of the video marketing landscape.

For deeper insights into CTV advertising, OEM platforms, and the evolution of video measurement, listen to Episode 29 of The Pub Way Podcast.

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The future of digital marketing is no longer defined by who consumers are, where they have been, or what they clicked yesterday. It is defined by something far more immediate and human: the moment they are in right now.

For more than a decade, the marketing industry relied on identity-based signals and increasingly fragile behavioral signals to drive personalization and performance. That approach shaped an entire era of digital marketing, adtech, and marketing technologies.

Today, however, the industry faces a deeper structural challenge: signal loss and declining addressability. As privacy expectations rise and media consumption fragments across platforms and screens, brands are losing reliable ways to understand people and deliver relevance at scale.

What is emerging in their place is not a return to the past, but an evolution. One that reflects how people actually experience content in real time. This shift is redefining the future of advertising, and it is why Neuro-Contextual advertising is becoming central to the future of digital marketing.

Key Takeaways

• The future of digital marketing is shifting away from identity-based targeting toward understanding the moment or mood people are in.
  
• Relevance alone is no longer enough. Real impact comes from resonance, when advertising aligns with interest, emotion, and intent.
  
• Adtech innovation is redefining digital marketing strategies by using AI to interpret content rather than track people.
  
• Neuro-Contextual advertising enables privacy-first relevance by decoding how a moment feels, not who the user is.
  
• Brands, agencies, and publishers gain a competitive advantage when advertising feels welcome, natural, and emotionally aligned.
  
• As signal loss accelerates and addressability declines, understanding the moment is becoming the foundation of modern marketing.
  
  

Why relevance alone is no longer enough

Traditional contextual advertising focused on relevance. Match an ad to a topic. Place a message next to related content. Avoid unsafe environments. It worked, especially at scale, and it provided a privacy-safe alternative to behavioral targeting.

But relevance has a ceiling. An ad can be contextually relevant and still feel out of place. It can appear next to the right topic and still fail to connect.

The reason is simple. People do not consume content in a neutral state. Every article, video, or stream activates a mindset shaped by interest, emotion, and intent.

The future of digital marketing depends on understanding that difference.

Relevance answers where an ad appears. Resonance determines how it is experienced. That distinction is becoming one of the most important marketing trends shaping the industry.

Adtech innovation is shifting the foundation of digital marketing

How will the future of digital marketing change with adtech innovation?

Adtech innovation is moving away from surveillance and toward understanding. Instead of tracking individuals across the open web or social media, new AI-powered systems are learning to interpret the meaning of content itself.

This is where technological advancements in artificial intelligence are reshaping the marketing industry.

Modern AI-driven platforms can analyze content at scale across formats such as articles, video, CTV, and immersive experiences. They understand not just what content is about, but how it feels. Tone, emotion, and environment all matter.

This evolution allows digital marketing strategies to shift from prediction to presence. From guessing what consumers might want next to understanding what they are experiencing now.

In the future of digital marketing trends 2026 and beyond, this real-time understanding will be more valuable than any historical customer profile.

From targeting people to understanding moments

For years, marketing strategies centered on the “who.”

• Who is this person?
• What demographic box can they be placed in?
• What past behavior can predict their next move?

But the future of advertising is moving toward the “what” and the “how.”

• What is this person engaging with?
• How does this moment feel?
• What mindset does this content create?

This is where Neuro-Contextual thinking changes everything

Neuro-Contextual advertising starts with the premise that interest, emotion, and intent are expressed through content itself. These signals reflect how open someone is to receiving information, forming memory, and taking action in real time.

Instead of building campaigns around identity, Neuro-Contextual advertising aligns ads with moments that naturally invite connection. This approach bridges the gap between digital marketing performance and genuine customer engagement.

Why Neuro-Contextual advertising is central to the future of digital marketing

Can Neuro-Contextual improve relevance and performance in the future of digital marketing? Yes. And more importantly, it improves meaning

Neuro-Contextual advertising builds on contextual foundations but goes deeper. It uses AI-powered analysis to interpret content through a human lens, identifying emotional and cognitive signals in real time.

When ads align with these signals, the brain processes them more easily. Attention increases. Emotional response strengthens. Memory formation improves.

These are the core Neuro-Contextual advertising benefits. They move advertising beyond surface-level relevance and into resonance.

In a privacy-first world, this approach allows brands to gain deeper insights without relying on personal customer data. It respects user expectations while delivering actionable insights that improve performance across the funnel.

Learn more about Neuro-Contextual Advertising

• Neuro-Contextual Advertising: Winning Audiences Through Interests, Emotions and Intentions
• How Neuromarketing Is Redefining Ad Relevance Today
• How is Neuroscience Transforming the Digital Advertising Landscape
  
  

The neuroscience behind resonance

Understanding why resonance works requires looking at how the brain processes information.

Insights from neuroscience help explain why emotionally aligned advertising is processed more fluently, remembered more clearly, and trusted more instinctively by the brain. When content and advertising share the same emotional tone and intent, cognitive effort decreases, and the experience feels natural rather than disruptive.

This is exactly what our neuroscience research revealed. By measuring real-time brain responses, the study found that Neuro-Contextual advertising generates significantly stronger neural and emotional engagement when ads align with the interest, emotion, and intent expressed in the surrounding content. Compared with non-contextual advertising, Neuro-Contextual placements delivered up to 3.5x higher neural engagement, alongside a 26% stronger emotional response than standard contextual approaches.

Instead of interrupting attention, Neuro-Contextual advertising fits into the flow of the experience. It works with the brain’s natural processing patterns rather than against them. This distinction is critical for the future of digital marketing, especially as attention becomes harder to earn and competition for relevance intensifies.

A new role for AI in digital marketing

Artificial intelligence has played a role in digital marketing for years, from product recommendations to campaign optimization. Much of that use focused on automation rather than understanding.

The next phase of AI in digital marketing is different.

AI-powered, Neuro-Contextual systems are designed to interpret meaning. They analyze text, imagery, and video to understand the emotional environment surrounding content in real time.

This allows marketers to align creative with mindset, adapt messaging to emotional tone, and deliver immersive experiences without relying on identity-based tracking.

In the future of digital marketing, AI-driven understanding becomes a durable competitive advantage. Not because it knows more about the person behind the screen, but because it understands moments better.

What this shift means for brands, agencies, and publishers

For brands, Neuro-Contextual advertising enables emotional connection at scale without sacrificing reach or privacy. Campaigns align with moments of curiosity, inspiration, or intent across digital channels and CTV.

For agencies, Neuro-Contextual signals provide a smarter planning foundation. Instead of relying solely on historical behavior, planners can use human-like understanding of context to inform creative, placement, and optimization decisions.

For publishers, Neuro-Contextual advertising rewards quality content rather than clickbait. Performance reflects emotional resonance, not just clicks, helping publishers build sustainable value.

Why the future of digital marketing starts with understanding the moment

As privacy expectations evolve and addressability continues to decline, the marketing industry must find new ways to connect without relying on personal identifiers. Neuro-Contextual advertising answers that challenge by focusing on the most impactful variable in advertising: the moment someone is in.

Reaching people at the right moment drives stronger attention, deeper emotional connection, and greater recall because it aligns with how they are already thinking and feeling. By understanding interest, emotion, and intent as they emerge through content, brands can create advertising that feels relevant, respectful, and real.

The future of digital marketing will belong to those who stop chasing people around the internet and start showing up in the moments that spark their passions.

Relevance will always matter. But resonance is what drives connection, memory, and action. Neuro-Contextual advertising defines a more human, privacy-first future for the marketing industry.

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Valentine’s Day is no longer just about flowers, chocolates, and last-minute gifts. In recent years, the holiday has evolved into a broader cultural moment shaped by emotion, self-expression, and shared experiences. For brands, this shift changes how Valentine’s Day ads should be planned, delivered, and measured.

Rather than focusing only on romantic clichés, today’s most effective Valentine’s Day marketing reflects how people actually feel, plan, and engage with content around the celebration. Understanding those behaviours is the foundation of a stronger valentine campaign.

Below, we explore what ads work best, the best Valentine’s day ads ideas to consider, and what’s trending this year in seasonal advertising.

Key takeaways

• The most effective Valentine’s Day ads align with emotional context, not just gifting moments.
• Successful Valentine campaign strategies reflect a wider range of relationships and celebrations.
• Relevance driven by context now matters more than interruption.
• Seasonal Valentine’s Day marketing is becoming more experience-led and less product-focused.
• Longer activation windows are shaping how day ads perform around St Valentine’s.

What Valentine’s Day ads work best for a campaign?

Ready to dive into what was buzzing in Las Vegas?

The Valentine’s Day ads that perform best align with emotional context rather than interrupt it. In the lead-up to the holiday, people are already immersed in emotionally charged content. They browse gift inspiration, plan shared experiences, read lifestyle stories, and engage with culture that reflects connection and anticipation.

What truly drives connection during this period is not who people are on paper, such as their age, gender, or past online behaviour, but what captures their interest, emotion, and intent in the moment. Valentine’s Day advertisement placements that appear alongside relevant content tend to feel more welcome because they align with how people are already thinking and feeling.

Instead of pushing promotional messages into unrelated environments, effective ads match the tone and emotional state of the moment. This alignment helps brands earn attention and a positive association without relying on pressure or urgency. As a result, the strongest Valentine's campaign strategies are defined by relevance, not volume.

When campaigns are built around a neuro-contextual approach, brands gain a deeper understanding of what truly matters to audiences in each moment. By aligning media placement with real-time signals of interest, emotion, and intent, advertising becomes more precise and more human. The result is smarter placement, creative that resonates emotionally, and messaging that feels natural rather than intrusive, driving stronger engagement, more meaningful connections, and measurable impact.

The best Valentine’s Day ads ideas for modern campaigns

The best Valentine’s Day ads ideas today reflect how diverse the holiday has become. While romance remains important, audiences increasingly respond to content that includes friendship, self-care, humour, and shared rituals. This broader emotional lens allows Valentine’s Day marketing to resonate with more people in more authentic ways.

Many effective Valentine’s Day advertisement strategies focus on experiences rather than transactions. Messaging that highlights moments, ideas, or inspiration tends to feel more supportive and relevant than purely product-led communication. When ads help people decide how to celebrate rather than what to buy, they add value to the experience.

Timing also plays a central role. Early in the season, audiences are in a discovery moment, seeking inspiration and planning ideas. As the day approaches, convenience and clarity become more important. A flexible Valentine’s Day marketing plan that adapts to these shifting needs performs far better than a single, static message.

What’s trending this year for Valentine’s Day ads?

This year, Valentine’s Day ads are trending towards a softer and more emotionally intelligent approach. Brands are moving away from exaggerated romantic tropes and embracing authenticity. Content that reflects real relationships, personal choice, and emotional nuance is seeing stronger engagement.

In online advertising, Neuro-Contextual placement is becoming increasingly important. Valentine’s Day ads are now appearing alongside food-related content, wellbeing stories, entertainment coverage, and lifestyle features. These environments reflect how people experience Valentine’s Day as part of daily life, rather than solely as a retail occasion.

Another key trend is timing. Valentine’s Day marketing is starting earlier and extending beyond 14 February. Longer activation windows allow brands to support planning, anticipation, and last-minute decisions in a way that feels natural rather than forced.

Building a Valentine’s Day marketing plan that connects

A successful Valentine’s Day marketing plan begins with empathy. Brands that understand emotional context and how people engage with content are better positioned to create Valentine’s Day ads that feel relevant and timely. For many teams, having a clear checklist for a valentine campaign helps ensure messaging, timing, and placements remain aligned with how people actually experience St Valentine’s.

This shift reflects a broader change in advertising, moving away from targeting individuals in isolation and towards understanding the environments and emotional states that shape real decisions. When context, emotion, and intent are considered together, media placement becomes smarter, and campaigns resonate more deeply.

Rather than asking how to stand out during the season, the more effective question is how to show up at the right moment. When Valentine’s Day advertising aligns with what people are already exploring, it becomes part of the experience rather than an interruption.

As the holiday continues to evolve, the brands that succeed will be those that focus less on formulas and more on connection. The future of Valentine’s Day ads is not about saying more. It is about understanding more and letting relevance do the work.

Super Bowl ads have always been a cultural event in their own right. Every year, brands compete for attention during the biggest game on the calendar, investing heavily in a single 30-second spot designed to entertain, surprise, or spark conversation. But the Super Bowl is no longer just a one-night advertising showdown. It has become a powerful window into how audiences engage with sports, culture, entertainment, and media throughout the year.

As Super Bowl LX approaches, the behaviors surrounding the big game reveal far more than which commercials people remember. They show how fans consume content across platforms, what drives emotional engagement, and how Super Bowl advertising influences broader marketing strategies well beyond game day. For marketers, these patterns provide essential insights into NFL sports that can help shape smarter Super Bowl advertising in 2026 and beyond.

Below, we break down what Super Bowl ads reveal about evolving NFL trends, how brands should plan beyond the 30-second spot, and why these signals are shaping Super Bowl advertising strategies throughout 2026.

Blog Post Highlights

• Super Bowl ads reflect broader audience behaviors, not just game-day viewing.
• NFL sports insights show that attention spans food, betting, entertainment, teams, and culture.
• The traditional 30-second spot is only one part of a much larger Super Bowl advertising ecosystem.
• NFL trends observed during the Super Bowl influence creative and media strategies year-round.
  
  
  

What NFL sports insights do Super Bowl ads reveal each year?

Each Super Bowl captures a snapshot of how audiences behave at a specific cultural moment. While the game itself remains central, the interests surrounding it reveal what truly holds attention. Seedtag’s Super Bowl LX Neuro-Contextual analysis shows that fan engagement consistently extends beyond football alone.

Five interest areas dominate Super Bowl engagement:

• Fantasy football and sports betting
• Football food and game-day recipes
• The halftime show and music culture
• Teams and players
• Watch parties and tailgating

These patterns reveal an important truth. Super Bowl ads are not competing only with other commercials. They are competing with bets being placed, recipes being searched, fantasy lineups being debated, and halftime performers being discussed. Each year, the Super Bowl highlights how fans experience the event as a cultural and social ritual, not just a sports broadcast.

For advertisers, this is a clear insight. Super Bowl advertising works best when it aligns with why people are watching, not just what they are watching. Ads that connect to these surrounding behaviors feel more relevant, while those that ignore them risk fading into the background.

Beyond the 30-second spot: planning Super Bowl ads across the NFL ecosystem

The iconic bowl ad still plays an important role, but its function has evolved. The Super Bowl is no longer a single-screen experience, and strategies built only around broadcast TV miss how audiences actually engage with the event.

Super Bowl fans now move fluidly across streaming platforms, sports networks, mobile devices, and second screens. At the same time, live behaviors such as sports betting, social commentary, and real-time analysis amplify engagement throughout the game. As a result, Super Bowl advertising must be designed for an ecosystem, not a single placement.

In this environment, the 30-second spot becomes a launch point rather than a conclusion. Effective Super Bowl ads extend into:

• Pre-game moments, as fans research teams, players, and matchups
• In-game moments, when attention spikes around key plays, betting updates, and halftime
• Post-game conversations, where commercials are replayed, shared, and discussed

Brands that plan for these moments can stay present without relying on interruption alone. The goal shifts from simply being seen to being contextually relevant across the fan journey.

How food, betting, and entertainment shape Super Bowl advertising

One of the clearest NFL sports insights from Super Bowl LX is the role non-sports content plays in driving engagement. Football food is a prime example. Searches and content around dips, soups, snacks, and drinks surge ahead of the big game, reinforcing the Super Bowl’s role as a shared social experience.

Fantasy football and sports betting also command sustained attention. Fans actively seek predictions, odds, and strategy content before and during the game, creating high-intent moments where focus is already strong. These behaviors indicate opportunities for brands to connect when audiences are especially receptive.

Entertainment adds a further layer. The halftime show consistently attracts audiences beyond traditional football fans, turning the Super Bowl into a crossover event that blends sports, music, and pop culture. This expansion reshapes Super Bowl advertising, increasing its reach while raising expectations for cultural relevance.

Together, these dynamics show that the most effective Super Bowl ads are grounded in alignment. When advertising reflects the rituals and interests surrounding the game, it feels natural rather than intrusive.

Teams, players, and narratives that extend beyond game day

Teams and players also play a central role in shaping engagement. Certain franchises dominate conversation due to performance, history, and cultural relevance, while star players generate attention that stretches well beyond the field.

Player-driven narratives often spill into entertainment and celebrity culture, connecting the NFL to broader media conversations. These storylines transform football coverage into lifestyle content, influencing what fans read, watch, and share throughout the season.

This is where NFL trends become especially valuable for marketers. The Super Bowl doesn’t just reflect current interest; it signals which narratives, personalities, and themes are likely to shape attention throughout the year. Brands that recognize these patterns can plan Super Bowl ads that remain relevant long after the final play.

How Super Bowl ads shape broader Super Bowl advertising trends

Super Bowl advertising has a lasting influence on the industry. The creative styles, tones, and messages that resonate during the big game often set expectations for advertising across the months that follow.

Each Super Bowl becomes a testing ground for what audiences respond to, whether that’s humor, nostalgia, cultural commentary, or emotional storytelling. These signals inform how brands approach campaigns throughout the year, not just during marquee moments.

Seedtag’s Neuro-contextual approach plays a defining role in this shift. Ads that appear alongside content aligned with fan interests, intents, and emotional states feel more welcome and less disruptive. Over time, this raises the standard for Super Bowl advertising and for sports marketing more broadly.

From visibility to relevance: why the Neuro-contextual approach matters more than ever

As the Super Bowl grows more complex, visibility alone is no longer enough. Fans are surrounded by content, commentary, and distractions. What cuts through is relevance, showing up in the right environment, at the right moment, with the right message.

Neuro-Contextual advertising supports this shift by aligning ads with content people are already engaging with. During the Super Bowl, that may include food content, betting analysis, team coverage, or halftime discussions. These placements complement the experience rather than interrupt it.

This approach allows Super Bowl advertising to extend beyond the broadcast and into the broader content ecosystem. It keeps messaging connected to how fans think, feel, and decide throughout the season.

What Super Bowl ads tell us about what comes next

Super Bowl ads are no longer just about winning the night. They are about understanding the audience. The NFL sports insights revealed each year offer a roadmap for smarter, more effective advertising strategies.

As Super Bowl LX approaches, the takeaway is clear. Brands that succeed in 2026 will be those that move beyond the standalone 30-second spot and treat Super Bowl advertising as an ongoing conversation. By aligning with the interests, narratives, and contexts that matter to fans, marketers can turn the big game into a year-long opportunity.

The future of Super Bowl advertising isn’t louder. It’s more connected and more attuned to how audiences actually experience the game.

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In a digital advertising world that never stands still, success belongs to those who adapt, innovate, and rise to new challenges.

Seedtag has evolved tremendously since our inception more than a decade ago. Through continuous innovation and an unwavering belief in the power of context, we’ve built a company that leads brands, agencies, and publishers into a more intelligent, privacy-first future. And as we continue to grow, it’s only natural that our brand identity evolves too — to reflect who we’ve become and where we’re headed.

1. The Next Chapter of Contextual: Neuro-Contextual
2. A new look, the same soul
3. Seeing the World Through a Human Lens
4. Strengthening our commitments
5. What this means for our partners

The Next Chapter of Contextual: Neuro-Contextual

In 2025, we launched Neuro-Contextual, the next evolution of contextual advertising. Powered by our AI, Liz, this technology goes beyond content — combining advanced embeddings with neuroscience principles to understand audiences with unprecedented precision. Liz defines the interests, emotions, and intents that drive engagement across the open web and CTV, creating connections that are both effective and deeply human.

A new look, the same soul

Our new brand identity is a reflection of this journey. For me, a brand has always been more than a logo or color palette; it’s the heartbeat of who we are. The best brands feel authentic — they mirror the people and purpose behind them.

This refreshed look embodies what Seedtag stands for today: sleek, intelligent, and modern, yet grounded in humanity and authenticity. Our logo remains untouched, honoring the legacy that brought us here and the innovative ideas still taking root and growing every day.

While our visual identity evolves, our essence remains unchanged. We’re still as passionate as ever about privacy, innovation, and making the digital world better for everyone.

Seeing the World Through a Human Lens

At the heart of our new design are the lenses — a powerful symbol of how we view the world. They represent our belief that what drives engagement isn’t found in demographics, but in how people feel in the moment.

This is the foundation of Neuro-Contextual advertising: understanding the context and environment that shape people’s experiences rather than targeting individuals in isolation. Your age, gender, or what you clicked on yesterday says little about who you are today. What truly matters is what captures your interest, emotion, and intent right now — that’s what drives meaningful connection.

Strengthening our commitments

Our mission is clear: to bring Liz to the world — helping brands and publishers create advertising rooted in human understanding, not surveillance.

A key step toward this is the upcoming Liz Agent, an intelligent interface designed to deliver deeper insights into audiences, competitors, and optimization opportunities for our clients.

Our vision is a future where advertising feels relevant, respectful, and real — engaging people in ways that inspire, not interrupt. Seedtag aims to be more than a partner that drives results; we want to help shape a digital universe where advertising truly adds value.

What this means for our partners

For our partners — brands, agencies, and publishers — this evolution strengthens what we’ve always stood for. Our focus remains the same: privacy, performance, and human connection.

By harnessing the power of Neuro-Contextual intelligence, our partners gain:

• Deeper audience understanding
• Smarter media placement
• Campaigns that resonate emotionally

The result is advertising that feels natural, not intrusive — delivering better engagement, stronger connections, and measurable impact.

We’re deeply grateful for your trust and partnership as we take this next step forward. Together, we’re building a future where advertising doesn’t just reach people — it connects with them.

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The junk food advert ban, restrictions for less healthy food or drink on television (TV) and online, represent one of the most consequential changes to UK advertising regulation in recent years. Introduced to address rising levels of childhood obesity and better protect children from exposure to unhealthy foods, the legislation places strict limits on how HFSS products, defined as those high in fat, salt, or sugar, can be promoted across television and online environments.

For brands operating across food and drinks, fast food, and soft drinks, the impact of the junk food advertising ban goes far beyond compliance. The challenge is no longer whether these rules apply, but how to plan media effectively, remain visible, and stay compliant within a far more restricted advertising landscape. Traditional, product-led food adverts are being replaced by brand-led storytelling, contextual relevance, and a stronger focus on responsibility.

Crucially, this shift does not mean abandoning digital channels or the audiences brands have spent years building. Instead, it marks a transition in how those audiences are reached and what they are shown. The same people are still there, but the stories brands tell, and the environments they appear in, must evolve.

Understanding the junk food advert ban UK and its implications is now a strategic priority for marketers.

Below, we break down how the HFSS advertising rules work, what they mean for media planning in the UK, and the practical steps brands can take to stay compliant while continuing to build relevance and trust.

Key takeaways

• The junk food advert ban UK restricts HFSS food adverts on television before 9 pm and bans them online entirely.
• The regulation is designed to reduce childhood obesity and limit exposure to unhealthy foods from a young age.
• Compliance requires a shift away from product-led advertising towards brand, lifestyle, and contextual storytelling.
• Contextual media planning is essential for maintaining reach while respecting HFSS rules.
• Brands that align with public health goals are better positioned for long-term trust and growth.
  

What is the junk food advert ban?

The junk food ad ban forms part of the UK’s broader HFSS advertising rules, which came fully into force in January 2026. These regulations apply to paid advertising for food and drinks products classified as high in fat, salt, or sugar, based on government nutrient profiling models.

Under the rules:

• HFSS food advertising is banned on television before 9 pm.
• Paid-for online advertising of HFSS products is prohibited across social, display, video, search, and influencer channels.
• The restrictions apply regardless of audience demographics, including campaigns aimed primarily at adults.

Evidence shows that repeated exposure to junk food advertising influences eating habits from a young age, contributing to higher rates of children becoming overweight or obese. The policy is therefore designed to protect children and support wider public health objectives, rather than restrict the food industry outright.

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Junk food advert ban implications for brands

One of the most immediate implications of the junk food advertising ban is a fundamental change in how brands communicate. Product imagery, pack shots, and direct promotional messaging are no longer viable across many television and online placements.

However, this does not signal the end of brand presence or performance-driven outcomes. Brands are adapting by shifting towards:

• Masterbrand storytelling rather than individual product promotion;
• Lifestyle and usage-led content that avoids direct product advertising;
• Highlighting healthier options within broader portfolios;
• Creative formats that focus on values, culture, and shared moments.

These constraints are not limiting creativity. They are accelerating it. Similar shifts have already taken place in other highly regulated categories, where success depends on finding the right balance between compliance, brand identity, and audience relevance.

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How to plan media in the UK under HFSS restrictions

Planning media under HFSS rules requires moving away from audience-based targeting and towards a more Neuro-Contextual approach.

Instead of asking who the audience is, brands must consider:

• Where their ads appear
• The surrounding content and emotional tone
• Whether the message feels appropriate, supportive, and responsible.

Neuro-Contextual advertising allows brands to appear in relevant environments without promoting restricted products directly. Food advertising can focus on cooking inspiration, everyday rituals, or brand purpose, rather than fast food or junk food items themselves.

As Marko Johns, UK Managing Director at Seedtag, explains:

“In a more regulated advertising environment, success will belong to brands that stop chasing only visibility and start optimising for receptivity, grounded in emotional relevance.”

This approach ensures that food adverts feel welcome rather than disruptive, even as regulations tighten.

Creativity, brand identity, and adaptive optimisation

As creative strategies evolve under HFSS regulation, brand identity takes on greater importance. When products cannot take centre stage, distinctive brand assets, tone, and emotional cues carry more weight in driving recognition and recall.

By analysing how audiences respond to different creative elements across environments, Seedtag’s creative intelligence can identify which visual signals, narratives, and emotional cues perform best in each context. This enables creatives to be adapted dynamically, not replaced, helping even simple brand stories evolve into high-impact executions that drive attention, memory, and action.

This approach supports creativity rather than constraining it, allowing brands to refine how they show up while remaining aligned with both regulation and audience expectations.

How to stay compliant with HFSS advertising UK

Staying compliant with HFSS advertising UK rules requires close coordination between creative, media, and legal teams.

Best practice includes:

• Removing direct references to HFSS products from creative.
• Avoiding imagery or language associated with unhealthy foods.
• Ensuring online placements do not promote restricted items indirectly.
• Keeping clear documentation to demonstrate regulatory responsibility.

Compliance is not only about avoiding fines. It increasingly shapes brand trust. Consumers expect food brands to act responsibly, particularly when it comes to protecting children and supporting healthier choices.

Turning restriction into opportunity

While the junk food advert ban introduces clear limitations, it also creates space for brands to evolve how they show up in the market. As product-led promotion becomes less viable, creativity, Neuro-Contextual intelligence, and emotional understanding increasingly determine effectiveness, often more than reach alone.

Brands that focus on purpose, promote healthier options, and invest in meaningful storytelling can continue to build salience without relying on traditional junk food advertising. This shift encourages a move away from interruption and towards relevance, where messages feel appropriate to the moment and the environment in which they appear.

For brands looking to navigate this transition in practice, understanding how FMCG brands can win in a restricted ad landscape means rethinking media planning, creative strategy, and the role of context in building trust at scale.

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