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Most brands still treat a cultural moment like a single event. A topic trends, a campaign gets built around the headline, and by the time it launches, the conversation has already moved on.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding is a perfect example, not because of the ceremony itself, but because of everything that happened around it. Long before any official details were confirmed, the internet had already transformed it into dozens of interconnected conversations spanning fashion, sports, celebrity media, luxury, and fandom.
That gap between how brands plan and how culture actually moves is one of the most overlooked trends in advertising today.
To better understand it, Seedtag’s LAB Insights team mapped the online conversation using Liz, our proprietary Neuro-Contextual AI. What emerged went far beyond one couple or one weekend. It revealed how cultural moments evolve across connected interests, emotions, and intent, and why real-time marketing built around a single keyword rarely captures the full opportunity.
The timing couldn't be more relevant. As brands continue to invest in video ads, generative AI, and short-form content, the race to respond to cultural moments is only accelerating. But speed alone doesn't solve the core challenge. Most campaigns built around viral moments still capture only a fraction of the conversation because they're not designed to follow where attention actually goes.
Key Takeaways
- Cultural moments rarely unfold as a single story. They spread across interconnected clusters of interest, emotion, and intent.
- Speculation often generates more sustained engagement than the confirmed event itself, making anticipation a marketing opportunity in its own right.
- Audiences move fluidly between fashion, sports, entertainment, and lifestyle, while many marketing strategies still treat these as separate categories.
- Brand mentions and fashion signals emerge early, creating valuable windows for brand recognition long before mainstream coverage catches up.
- Understanding conversations at the cluster level, rather than the headline level, turns viral moments into smarter, data-driven marketing strategies.
What Hidden Advertising Trends Do Brands Miss When a Cultural Moment Goes Viral?
Most marketing teams still approach cultural moments as a single spike in attention. A story breaks, interest rises, then fades, and campaigns are built to capture that one wave.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding shows why that model leaves value on the table.
Using Liz, we identified more than 2,160 topic nodes grouped into seven distinct contextual clusters. This wasn't one conversation. It was seven overlapping narratives, each with its own audience, emotional tone, and commercial relevance.
Two of those clusters, Swiftie Speculations and Entertainment Press, each represented roughly 30% of the entire graph. Long before the ceremony took place, conversations around celebrity NDAs, venue rumors, family connections, and media speculation were already driving enormous engagement.
The biggest marketing opportunity isn't the cultural moment itself. It's everything happening before, around, and beyond it.
The build-up consistently attracts more sustained attention than the event itself, and it expands across categories that have little to do with the obvious topic. A wedding quickly becomes a conversation about fashion, sports, music, luxury, celebrity media, and fandom, each creating its own emotional context and commercial opportunity.
Why Do Traditional Marketers Fail to Catch Emerging Advertising Trends Related to Internet Subcultures?
One of today's fastest-moving advertising trends is the growing influence of internet subcultures on mainstream conversations. Yet traditional marketing strategy still plans around categories like sports, entertainment, and fashion as if audiences move between them in predictable ways.
They don't. Internet communities connect topics organically, creating conversations that cross industries, audiences, and platforms.
Swifties are a perfect example.
Throughout the weeks leading up to the wedding, fans treated every rumor, clue, and unconfirmed detail as meaningful. Liz's contextual graph surfaced clusters filled with themes like superfans, theories, itineraries, and speculation, sitting alongside entertainment journalism and celebrity news coverage.
The conversation wasn't driven by confirmed information. It was driven by curiosity.
Brands focused exclusively on official news coverage would have missed where engagement was actually happening.
A second cluster told a parallel story.
Taylor Swift's music career and Travis Kelce's NFL season evolved side by side, connecting music, sports, celebrity culture, and personal relationships into a single narrative. Rather than one audience absorbing the other, two powerful communities expanded the conversation together.
For marketers, that's the real lesson. Consumer behavior doesn't follow category boundaries. It follows relevance.
Understanding those connections requires data-driven marketing strategies capable of following conversations as they evolve, rather than waiting for headlines to define them.
One Moment, Many Conversations
This is where many marketing strategies fall short.
Marketers often build campaigns around the trending keyword, assuming audiences experience culture through a single topic.
They don't.
People move naturally between interests, emotions, and intent, following whichever thread feels most relevant in the moment.
Fashion became one of the earliest signals in this example.
Before most official details emerged, guest photos, designer speculation, and luxury brand mentions had already formed one of the densest contextual clusters within Liz's graph.
Dior quickly became associated with the wedding dress, while Artifex attracted attention for the engagement ring. Rather than supporting the main story, these brands became part of it, generating their own conversations driven by admiration, aspiration, and curiosity.
This is real-time marketing at its best.
Fashion isn't simply an extension of a cultural moment. It's often one of the first places where brand recognition accelerates because audiences are already emotionally invested.
Secrecy became another conversation entirely.
Once speculation focused on Madison Square Garden, discussions around guest lists, venue security, the 34th Street shutdown, and celebrity NDAs exploded across media and social platforms.
Much of the engagement wasn't fueled by confirmed information. It was fueled by anticipation.
That anticipation spread especially well through short-form video, where audiences actively searched for updates, theories, and behind-the-scenes clues rather than polished explanations.
More importantly, it demonstrates a broader advertising trend.
People don't wait for the headline. They engage with everything leading up to it.
Why Marketers Miss These Connected Conversations
Traditional media planning still tends to organize campaigns by category. Sports content is bought as sports. Entertainment is bought as entertainment. Fashion is treated as its own world.
But audiences don't experience culture that way.
They move seamlessly between conversations, following the stories, emotions, and communities that matter most to them.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding showed exactly that.
Swifties didn't simply overlap with NFL fans. Together, they created an entirely new conversation that neither audience could have generated alone. Music, sports, celebrity culture, and lifestyle became part of the same cultural moment, creating fresh opportunities for brands that understood how those interests connected.
The emotional signals driving that conversation were equally revealing.
Admiration, anticipation, excitement, and joy weren't attached to one topic. They flowed naturally across multiple contextual clusters as audiences followed every new development.
That's why campaigns built around a single category often miss the moment when engagement is at its highest.
Audience intent doesn't follow media plans. It follows connected conversations.
And understanding those conversations is becoming one of the defining advertising trends shaping modern marketing strategy.
The Marketing Lesson: Understanding Before Reacting
Reacting quickly to a cultural moment is no longer enough.
The real advantage comes from understanding how that moment evolves before, during, and after it captures mainstream attention.
This is where Neuro-Contextual Intelligence changes the equation.
Rather than relying on personal data or assumptions about who audiences are, our Neuro-Contextual AI, Liz, interprets signals of interest, emotion, and intent directly from the content people are engaging with across the open web.
Applied to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding, Liz identified more than 2,160 topic nodes connected across seven contextual clusters, revealing not just where attention existed, but how it moved between fashion, sports, entertainment, luxury, fandom, and celebrity media.
Instead of reducing the event to a single headline or keyword, the graph exposed an ecosystem of interconnected conversations.
That's the principle behind Neuro-Contextual Advertising.
Rather than treating a cultural moment as a single media opportunity, it enables brands to understand the wider context surrounding it, helping them align with the emotions, interests, and intent driving engagement in real time.
Because understanding audiences means understanding how conversations evolve, not simply what they're talking about at any given moment.
What This Means for Marketing Strategy
The pace of digital culture continues to accelerate.
Marketers are investing more in generative AI, content creation, short-form video, and social media campaigns to respond faster to emerging trends. Those investments matter.
But speed alone isn't enough.
The brands that create meaningful connections won't necessarily be the ones publishing first.
They'll be the ones who understand where attention is moving before everyone else does.
That requires looking beyond headlines and trending keywords to see the broader patterns shaping consumer behavior.
Cultural moments don't belong to a single audience, a single platform, or a single category.
They're built from dozens of interconnected conversations unfolding simultaneously across the open web.
Understanding those connections is quickly becoming one of the most important competitive advantages in modern marketing.
The Advertising Trend That Actually Matters
The next defining cultural moment won't belong to the brands that react the fastest. It'll belong to the brands that understand how conversations spread.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding is simply one example.
Tomorrow's defining moment could be the Super Bowl, the Oscars, a World Cup final, or an unexpected viral trend. The event will change, but the pattern won't.
Cultural moments don't unfold through a single conversation. They spread across interconnected interests, emotions, and behaviors.
For marketers, that's the advertising trend that matters most. The brands that learn to understand those connections won't just keep up with culture. They'll be ready to move with it.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 will generate an unprecedented volume of attention across digital media. For automotive brands, that scale creates enormous opportunity but also a significant challenge: standing out in an environment where every advertiser competes for the same audience.
The difference between visibility and impact comes down to understanding intent. Not every football fan is equally receptive to a brand message, and not every page view signals genuine engagement.
During major sporting events, audiences move between match coverage, transfer rumors, national team narratives, player stories, entertainment content, and countless adjacent interests. Within those moments lie valuable signals that can help brands identify when consumers are most open to engagement.
The question is no longer how to reach World Cup audiences. It is about identifying the moments when attention becomes meaningful engagement.
Below, we explore the audience insights shaping fan behavior during the tournament and how automotive brands can use Neuro-Contextual advertising to transform World Cup attention into meaningful consideration.
Key Takeaways
- The difference between a browser and an engaged consumer often lies in intent signals, not audience segments.
- World Cup audiences engage with far more than football, creating valuable opportunities across adjacent interests and passion points.
- Emotions such as excitement, curiosity, admiration, and optimism play a key role in how fans engage with content throughout the tournament.
- Neuro-Contextual advertising goes beyond keywords and categories to align messaging with interests, emotions, and intent.
- Dynamic creative optimization allows automotive campaigns to adapt in real time around tournament moments, audience context, and sentiment.
The Gap Between Looking and Engaging
Scale is not the challenge. During a World Cup, automotive brands can reach millions of consumers across the open web, connected TV, and streaming environments.
The challenge is identifying the difference between someone casually consuming content and someone demonstrating signals of genuine engagement.
Traditional targeting approaches often rely on keywords, categories, or broad audience segments. A page mentions "SUVs" or "electric vehicles," and an ad is served. While these signals can provide relevance, they do not always reveal what matters most: what the consumer is thinking, feeling, or looking for in that moment.
A reader exploring vehicle reviews out of curiosity may require a very different message from someone actively comparing models ahead of a purchase. Understanding that distinction helps brands move beyond simple reach and toward meaningful engagement.
Where Fan Attention Really Goes
One of the biggest misconceptions about the World Cup is that fans spend the tournament focused exclusively on football.
In reality, audience attention extends across a much broader ecosystem of content.
Audience interest also evolves throughout the tournament. Our insights show that engagement increases significantly during key moments such as the group stage, quarter-finals, and high-tension knockout rounds. Importantly, some of the largest spikes are driven not only by match results but also by player narratives, rivalries, and stories surrounding the competition.
Football-related interests such as domestic leagues, transfer rumors, national team stories, and club rivalries remain major drivers of engagement. But fans also spend time consuming content connected to celebrity culture, motorsports, entertainment, lifestyle topics, and national identity narratives.
These adjacent interests are not distractions from football fandom. They are part of how fans experience the tournament.
For automotive marketers, this creates additional opportunities to connect with audiences in contexts that may be less crowded than traditional sports environments while still maintaining strong relevance to fan interests.
Understanding these passion points allows brands to expand beyond match-day targeting and build a more comprehensive view of where their audiences spend time and attention.
The Emotional Signals Behind Engagement
The World Cup is not only a media event. It is an emotional one.
Across markets, football content generates a range of emotional responses, including excitement, curiosity, admiration, optimism, and even sadness. These emotions shift throughout the tournament as audiences react to victories, defeats, player performances, speculation, and national narratives.
While excitement consistently emerges as one of the strongest drivers of engagement, emotional responses vary across markets. Some audiences gravitate toward stories of national pride and sporting heroes, while others engage more deeply with tournament speculation, player narratives, or broader cultural conversations surrounding the event. Understanding these nuances can help brands deliver more relevant messaging throughout the competition.
For automotive brands, these signals offer valuable context. The emotions that shape engagement during the tournament can also influence how consumers respond to brand messaging, particularly in categories where consideration and aspiration play an important role.
Many vehicle purchase journeys are influenced by emotional factors alongside practical considerations. Curiosity about new technology, optimism about future ownership, excitement around a new model, and aspiration tied to lifestyle choices all play a role in consideration.
When brands understand the emotional context surrounding content consumption, they can align messaging more effectively with the consumer's interests, emotions, and intent in that moment.
How the Neuro-Contextual Approach Changes Automotive Marketing
Industry-standard targeting often relies on predefined content taxonomies and broad category classifications. Neuro-contextual approaches take a different path by analyzing content more deeply to understand interests, emotions, and intent signals in real time.
The difference between targeting a broad automotive category and identifying audiences such as Family Upgraders, First-Time Car Buyers, Urban Drivers, or Off-Road Adventure Enthusiasts is significant.
Rather than focusing solely on what content someone is consuming, Neuro-Contextual intelligence helps brands understand why that content matters to them.
For automotive marketers, this means identifying environments where signals of curiosity, optimism, excitement, and consideration are already present and aligning messaging accordingly.
The goal is not simply to be present. It is to be relevant.
Dynamic Creative That Moves With the Tournament
The World Cup unfolds in phases, and audience behavior evolves with it.
Interest levels rise during key matches, emotional intensity increases during knockout rounds, and fan conversations shift as new narratives emerge.
The content driving engagement during the group stage may be very different from the stories capturing attention during the quarter-finals or final, making flexibility a critical advantage for advertisers.
Creative should evolve alongside those changes.
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) allows campaigns to adapt messaging based on factors such as tournament stage, location, time of day, weather conditions, and emotional sentiment.
A message delivered during a high-tension quarter-final may require a different creative approach than one served during the group stage. Likewise, audiences engaging with family-focused content may respond differently than audiences consuming performance or technology-related content.
By aligning creative with context, brands can create more relevant experiences throughout the tournament.
Measuring What Actually Matters
Clicks and viewability remain useful metrics, but they do not tell the full story.
For automotive brands operating within long and consideration-heavy purchase journeys, understanding campaign impact requires a broader measurement framework.
Attention metrics help reveal whether advertising was genuinely processed by consumers. Brand lift studies can demonstrate shifts in awareness, perception, and consideration. Incremental reach helps determine whether campaigns are connecting with new audiences rather than repeatedly reaching the same users.
Together, these measurements provide a clearer view of how campaigns influence consumer behavior throughout the World Cup journey.
From Research to the Road
The FIFA World Cup 2026 presents a unique convergence of attention, emotion, and engagement.
Success will not belong solely to the brands with the largest budgets or the widest reach. It will belong to those who understand where fan attention is going, what emotions are driving engagement, and how to identify moments of genuine intent.
Traditional research helps identify the audience. Neuro-contextual intelligence helps identify the moment.
And during the world's biggest sporting event, that difference can determine whether a campaign is simply seen or truly remembered.
To learn more about the audience insights, emotional signals, and activation opportunities shaping FIFA World Cup 2026 campaigns, download the full Automotive Insights report.
Every year, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity offers a glimpse into where advertising is heading next. But in 2025, the conversations across the Croisette felt especially revealing.
At the heart of Cannes Lions 2025 was a growing realization that the future of advertising will depend less on identifying audiences and more on understanding people. Across beachfront stages, private dinners, podcast studios, and conversations inside the Palais des Festivals, the industry repeatedly returned to the same challenge: how can brands create more relevant experiences in an increasingly fragmented, AI-driven media landscape?
For Seedtag, Cannes 2025 became an important moment to help shape that conversation.
Throughout the week, Seedtag explored how Neuro-Contextual Advertising is redefining the relationship between media, creativity, and human understanding. From discussions around AI and emotional relevance to debates about journalism, contextual intelligence, and audience mindset, the company’s presence reflected a broader industry shift already reshaping modern advertising.
And now, as the industry prepares for another year in Cannes, France, those conversations are evolving even further.
Key Takeaways
- The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity highlighted the industry’s move from audience profiling toward deeper human understanding.
- Cannes Lions 2025 conversations focused heavily on AI, contextual relevance, emotional engagement, and privacy-first advertising.
- Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual approach emerged as part of a broader industry shift toward understanding interest, emotion, and intent.
- Creativity, media, and data became increasingly interconnected across the Cannes Lions International Festival.
- New discussions heading into Cannes 2026 are expanding beyond targeting and toward adaptive, human-aware advertising experiences.
What Cannes Lions 2025 Revealed About Advertising
The International Festival of Creativity has always reflected the priorities of the advertising industry. In 2025, those priorities shifted noticeably.
Artificial intelligence dominated discussions across nearly every stage and meeting space. But while AI remained central, the industry conversation matured significantly compared to previous years. The focus was no longer simply on automation or content generation. Instead, marketers increasingly questioned how technology can help advertising become more meaningful, more adaptive, and more emotionally aligned with people.
That tension defined much of Cannes Lions 2025.
Consumers today move fluidly between streaming platforms, creator ecosystems, social content, sports, commerce, and live cultural moments. Attention is fragmented, audience behavior changes constantly, and traditional identity-based targeting models are becoming less effective in a privacy-first world.
As a result, the industry is beginning to rethink what relevance actually means.
For us at Seedtag, that conversation connected directly to Neuro-Contextual Advertising. Rather than relying on static audience profiles or demographic assumptions, our approach focuses on understanding real-time signals of interest, emotion, and intent across the open web and premium media environments.
The idea is simple: people are more than profiles.
And increasingly, the advertising industry is starting to agree.
From Profiles to Passions
One of the defining conversations during Cannes 2025 centered on the limitations of traditional targeting.
For years, digital advertising has relied heavily on demographic segmentation and behavioral assumptions. But across the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, industry leaders repeatedly discussed the need to move beyond identity alone and focus more deeply on audience mindset, context, and motivation.
We explored this shift directly during the live crossover episode of AdTech Heroes x The Pub Way, hosted at The Drum’s podcast studio.
The conversation brought together leaders from across media, creative, and advertising to discuss how brands can better engage audiences through real-time understanding rather than static assumptions.
A recurring theme emerged quickly: marketers have spent years trying to understand who consumers are, while paying far less attention to why they engage in the first place.
That distinction matters.
People are shaped by passions, interests, emotions, and cultural moments that evolve continuously. Someone watching sports content during a major tournament may not respond to messaging the same way they would while reading financial news or consuming entertainment content later in the day.
Context changes mindset.
This idea became central to many discussions throughout the Cannes Lions International Festival. Relevance is no longer about reaching the right demographic. It is about understanding the emotional and cognitive environment surrounding attention itself.
AI Became About Understanding, Not Just Automation
AI remained one of the dominant themes across Cannes, France, but the industry conversation evolved significantly compared to previous years.
Earlier conversations around AI often focused on speed, scale, and automation. At Cannes Lions 2025, the emphasis shifted toward intelligence, adaptability, and human understanding.
Marketers are now asking more complex questions. How can AI help interpret the audience mindset? How can it improve contextual relevance? How can it support creativity without reducing advertising to generic automation?
These discussions appeared repeatedly across panels, roundtables, and private conversations.
Our perspective centered on the idea that AI should not simply optimize delivery. It should help brands better understand the moments in which people engage with content.
This is where Neuro-Contextual Advertising becomes increasingly relevant.
By combining neuroscience principles with AI-powered contextual understanding, Liz, our Neuo-Contextual AI, is designed to interpret signals of interest, emotion, and intent in real time. The goal is not to identify individuals, but to understand the meaning surrounding the moment itself.
That approach reflects a larger shift happening across the industry.
Advertising is moving away from static targeting systems and toward adaptive environments capable of responding dynamically to changing emotional and contextual signals.
Creativity and Context Are Becoming Reconnected
Another major theme across the Palais des Festivals was the growing relationship between creativity and contextual relevance.
For years, programmatic advertising has often separated creative storytelling from media strategy. But at Cannes Lions 2025, many industry leaders argued that creativity can no longer function independently from context and audience understanding.
As media environments become increasingly fragmented, brands face growing pressure to create campaigns that feel synchronized with the emotional tone surrounding the content experience.
This is especially important across premium video, streaming, and creator-driven ecosystems where audiences expect advertising to feel more integrated and less disruptive.
Throughout the week, conversations increasingly focused on how creative effectiveness improves when messaging aligns with the real-time audience mindset.
That shift is transforming how marketers think about personalization itself.
Rather than personalizing around identity, advertisers are beginning to personalize around context, emotion, and intent.
This idea also appeared in conversations surrounding contextual TV, curated supply, and premium media environments. Brands are looking for advertising experiences that feel more thoughtful, more emotionally aware, and more aligned with the content moments consumers actively choose to engage with.
Journalism, Trust, and Smarter Contextual Understanding
Beyond AI and creativity, Cannes Lions 2025 also highlighted growing industry concerns around journalism, trust, and responsible monetization.
We participated in discussions exploring how rigid keyword blocklists and simplistic brand safety systems can unintentionally harm quality journalism.
This became an important conversation across the International Festival of Creativity because advertisers increasingly recognize that brand safety cannot rely exclusively on broad exclusions or outdated contextual assumptions.
High-quality journalism covering politics, climate, economics, or global conflict often becomes demonetized despite offering trusted, premium environments for advertisers.
That creates a difficult contradiction for the media ecosystem.
The solution discussed throughout Cannes 2025 was not abandoning brand safety altogether, but evolving toward more intelligent contextual systems capable of understanding nuance, tone, and meaning more effectively.
This conversation reinforced one of the industry’s broader shifts: context is becoming more sophisticated.
Modern contextual understanding is no longer limited to keywords alone. It increasingly depends on a deeper interpretation of emotional tone, audience mindset, and environmental relevance.
Looking Ahead to Cannes Lions 2026
As the industry prepares for the next Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, many of the conversations that defined 2025 are continuing to evolve.
This year, we will expand those discussions further at La Perle, our Cannes space designed for meetings, collaborative sessions, workshops, and thought leadership conversations.
The upcoming agenda reflects many of the themes that emerged throughout Cannes Lions 2025.
Sessions such as “The End of Guesswork: How to Reach Consumers Who Are Actually Ready to Listen” will explore how advertisers can move beyond stale targeting proxies and align campaigns with real-time emotion, interest, and intent.
Other conversations will focus on curated supply, contextual TV, AI and creativity, neuroscience, media responsibility, and human-centered advertising experiences.
We will also introduce experiential activations such as the “Scent of Context” lab, an immersive workshop designed to explore how emotion, memory, and sensory environments shape contextual understanding.
Together, these experiences reflect a broader evolution happening across advertising itself.
The industry is no longer asking only how to target people more efficiently. It is asking how to better understand the emotional and cognitive moments that shape attention.
From Profiles to Human Understanding
Looking back, Cannes Lions 2025 represented more than another industry gathering. It reflected a meaningful turning point in how advertising thinks about relevance.
AI became more mature. Context became more intelligent. Creativity became more connected to audience's mindset. And marketers increasingly recognized that understanding people requires more than data points alone.
For us at Seedtag, those conversations continue shaping the future of Neuro-Contextual Advertising.
Because the future of advertising will not belong to the brands that know the most about consumers. It will belong to the brands that understand the moment best.
And increasingly, that future is becoming more human-aware.
Every four years, the FIFA World Cup becomes more than a sporting event. It becomes a global cultural ecosystem where passion, identity, emotion, and attention collide in real time.
For sports brands, that creates an enormous opportunity, but also a challenge.
Because in 2026, the best sports marketing strategies will not be defined by visibility alone. They will be defined by the ability to understand how sports fans think, feel, and engage throughout the tournament.
During the World Cup, sports fans do not engage with football in isolation. They move between transfer rumors, national team pride, multisport interests, player storylines, jersey culture, and live match moments that evolve by the hour.
In the UK alone, more than 90% of World Cup-related engagement connects directly to football content, while adjacent passions, including celebrity culture, Formula 1, boxing, and cricket, continue shaping how fans experience the tournament.
That shift is transforming how sports marketing campaigns are planned.
To better understand these evolving fan behaviors, Liz, our Neuro-Contextual AI, analyzed World Cup and football-related media consumption across key markets, uncovering the emotional signals, passion points, and engagement patterns shaping fan engagement during the tournament.
The findings reveal something important: World Cup advertising is no longer about chasing audiences. It is about understanding the moments that move them.
Key Takeaways
- The best sports marketing strategies during the World Cup are built around emotion, timing, and contextual relevance
- Football-related content drives 90.6% of World Cup topic engagement in the UK, while adjacent cultural interests create additional engagement opportunities
- Peak fan attention occurs during knockout rounds and emotionally intense moments, not only during the final
- Excitement is the strongest emotional driver of World Cup engagement, especially in the UK and France
- Sports marketing trends increasingly rely on understanding interest, emotion, and intent rather than static demographic targeting
- Real-time creative optimization and contextual alignment help sports brands create engaging campaigns during live sporting moments
Why the World Cup Is Reshaping Sports Marketing Strategies
The FIFA World Cup has always delivered massive scale. Few sports events rival its global reach, emotional intensity, or cultural relevance.
But scale alone no longer guarantees impact.
Today’s sports fans consume the tournament across a much broader ecosystem of content and conversation. They follow player narratives long before kickoff and continue engaging long after the final whistle. Transfer rumors, team selection debates, jersey launches, multisport interests, and celebrity storylines all become part of how fans experience the tournament.
This creates a far more dynamic attention landscape for brands.
Instead of relying on broad reach or static audience profiles, sports marketing strategies now require a deeper understanding of how attention evolves throughout the tournament.
The World Cup has become an environment driven by moments. Moments of anticipation. Moments of pride. Moments of tension. Moments of celebration. Moments of curiosity.
The brands that succeed are the ones capable of aligning with those moments while they are happening.
That shift is also changing how the broader sports media ecosystem approaches advertising innovation.
In episode 33 of The PubWay podcast, Scott Young, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Transmit, explained that sports streaming platforms are under growing pressure to rethink how advertising experiences work during live sports. As subscription growth slows and media rights become increasingly fragmented, ad-supported streaming models are becoming central to the future of sports monetization.
But according to Young, sustaining viewer attention is now the real challenge.
Media companies are no longer focused only on inserting more ads. They are looking for ways to create more dynamic, personalized, and conversational advertising experiences that feel integrated into the viewing moment rather than disruptive to it.
That idea sits at the center of modern World Cup advertising.
What Sports Fans Actually Care About During the World Cup
One of the most important findings from our World Cup Sports Goods insights is that fan attention extends far beyond football itself.
In the UK, 90.6% of visits related to World Cup topics directly connect to football content. But even within football, engagement is layered across multiple passion points.
The largest driver of engagement comes from domestic leagues and football giants, representing 68.1% of football-related interest. Fans actively follow club performance, tactical discussions, and league narratives throughout the year.
Transfer market conversations account for another 15.4% of engagement, proving that speculation and player movement remain central to fan behavior even outside active transfer windows.
National pride and legacy discussions generate an additional 7.1% of engagement, especially around qualification journeys and national team performance heading into the tournament.
But the opportunity expands even further when brands look beyond football-only environments.
Connected interests also play a major role in fan engagement. Royal and celebrity connections linked to football personalities generate 4.4% of engagement. Multisport interests, including boxing, Formula 1, and cricket, contribute another 2.6%. WAGs and celebrity culture account for an additional 2.4% of engagement.
This is where some of the best sports marketing strategies emerge.
Rather than limiting campaigns to match-day inventory alone, brands can connect with sports fans across adjacent moments where attention and emotional engagement are already active.
Because during the World Cup, fan identity stretches far beyond the pitch.
How Fan Behavior Changes Across Markets
Another major insight from the report is that sports fans are not homogeneous.
Every market engages with the World Cup differently, with unique passion points shaping how audiences consume content.
In the UK, fans heavily follow domestic leagues, club giants, and transfer rumors, while celebrity culture and multisport interests strongly influence engagement.
In Spain, national team patriotism drives 34% of engagement, alongside growing interest in women’s football and practical viewing solutions.
French audiences gravitate toward domestic football rivalries and multisport content, including rugby, tennis, and golf.
German audiences, meanwhile, remain highly engaged with club routines, qualification updates, and broader football debates.
These differences matter because successful sports marketing campaigns cannot rely on a one-size-fits-all approach.
The World Cup may be global, but passion remains deeply local.
That is why the best sports marketing strategies adapt creative, messaging and contextual alignment to the cultural DNA of each audience.
The Emotional Side of World Cup Advertising
If interest explains what captures attention, emotion explains what drives engagement.
According to our analysis, excitement is the single strongest emotional driver during the World Cup, especially among UK and French audiences.
But emotion during the tournament is far more layered than celebration alone.
Fans also engage through curiosity, admiration, optimism, and even sadness.
Spanish and German audiences show particularly high levels of admiration toward global football stars and club legends. Italian audiences display stronger optimism while also consuming emotionally heavier football stories that drive social conversation.
This emotional diversity changes how sports brands should think about fan engagement.
Brands can no longer depend exclusively on broad contextual categories or keyword targeting. They need to understand how audiences feel within each moment.
That emotional alignment becomes especially powerful during knockout rounds, national team milestones, emotional victories, player comeback stories, jersey launches, and moments of national pride.
When creative reflects emotional context, campaigns feel more natural, more timely, and more relevant.
Scott Young described this shift during The PubWay episode by explaining that the strongest advertising experiences in live sports are the ones that speak to viewers based on what they are actively watching and feeling in that exact moment.
In practice, that could mean dynamically adapting creative around a major winning moment, a dramatic comeback, or a crucial goal.
It is no longer just about serving an ad during a live game. It is about aligning with the emotional energy surrounding it.
When Sports Fans Pay the Most Attention
One of the clearest patterns is how attention intensifies around key tournament stages.
Our analysis of previous football competitions reveals that traffic increased 4.3x during men’s quarterfinals compared to normal days, while women’s tournament traffic increased 3x during quarterfinals.
Live events themselves generate major audience activation spikes. But interestingly, the biggest engagement surges are not always driven by goals or tactics.
Many viral moments center around emotional narratives, celebrity culture, player personal lives, confrontation stories, and behind-the-scenes content.
This changes how sports brands should think about timing.
The best sports marketing strategies are not limited to the final or the biggest live sports moments. They are built around the emotional rhythm of the tournament itself.
That includes pre-match anticipation, qualification tension, transfer speculation, jersey release conversations, national pride, and post-match reactions.
Attention during the World Cup behaves like a wave, not a straight line. And increasingly, advertising innovation is being built around that reality.
Young also explained during the podcast that advertisers are seeing stronger results when contextual timing, emotional relevance, and messaging work together inside live sports environments.
According to the study mentioned in the episode, viewers exposed to integrated in-content ad experiences demonstrated 10x greater message recall compared to traditional ad pod experiences.
When timing and contextual alignment improved, viewers were also 20% more likely to scan and purchase.
That reinforces a growing reality within sports marketing trends: Attention alone is not enough. Relevance is what drives action.
How Sports Brands Should Plan World Cup Advertising Campaigns
So how should sports brands approach World Cup advertising in 2026?
The report points toward a major strategic shift away from static targeting and toward contextual understanding.
Fans no longer engage as broad demographic groups. They engage through interests, emotional identities, and passion ecosystems.
Some audiences follow jersey culture and kit releases. Others engage through multisport interests, football gaming, sports fashion, player admiration, or national identity.
That means sports marketing campaigns need to become more fluid and responsive.
Creative also needs to evolve alongside fan behavior.
That is why creative is becoming more dynamic during live sports moments, adapting in real time based on factors like competition stage, emotion, weather, location, and fan mindset.
The goal is not simply to increase visibility during sports events. It is to create engaging experiences that feel synchronized with the emotions surrounding the moment.
That is especially important in streaming and CTV environments, where sports fans increasingly consume content across connected viewing experiences.
Our report also highlights how contextual TV targeting can combine Open Web intelligence with enriched CTV signals to better align messaging with audience interests and viewing behaviors in real time.
For sports brands, this creates an opportunity to move beyond generic sponsorship visibility and toward more emotionally aware advertising experiences.
Turning Attention Into Advantage With Neuro-Contextual Advertising
At the center of this approach is Liz, our Neuro-Contextual AI.
Rather than relying exclusively on keywords or static contextual categories, Liz analyzes interest, emotion, and intent signals in real time to understand why audiences engage with specific content moments.
For sports brands, this creates a more responsive approach to fan engagement.
Our Sports Goods analysis highlights how brands can identify positive emotional responses, purchase intent signals, national team excitement, jersey demand moments, and emotionally engaged fan segments.
For example, fans actively searching for upcoming national jersey releases represent high-intent engagement moments tied directly to excitement, optimism, and desire.
This allows sports brands to move beyond static targeting and connect with audiences while interest is actively building.
Because in the end, the future of sports marketing strategies is not about reaching the largest possible audience. It is about understanding the moments that matter most.
Where Sports Marketing Goes Next
The FIFA World Cup continues to evolve from a sports tournament into a global attention ecosystem.
That shift is redefining World Cup advertising.
The brands that win during the tournament will not simply be the loudest. They will be the most relevant. The most emotionally aligned. The most contextually aware.
Because modern sports fans do not experience the tournament through a single behavior or a single passion point. They move fluidly between live match moments, transfer speculation, emotional storylines, sports culture, and real-time conversations that shape how the World Cup is experienced across the open web and streaming environments.
Get your Sports Goods Insigts
Align product demand with national team engagement and tournament milestones
Understanding those moments is what transforms visibility into engagement
And increasingly, that is what separates presence from performance in modern sports marketing campaigns.
To explore the full FIFA World Cup 2026 Sports Goods insights deck and uncover deeper fan engagement trends, emotional signals, and activation opportunities across markets, download the Sports Goods insight report from Seedtag.
You can also check out Episode 33 of The PubWay Podcast, “Ad Innovation in Live Sports Streaming,” to explore how live sports, streaming innovation, and contextual advertising are reshaping fan engagement during major global sporting events.
Notre blog
UK consumers are entering the shopping season with sharper expectations, stronger intent, and a smarter approach to spending. The traditional shopping calendar still matters, but the motivations behind every purchase are evolving.
From social commerce to sustainability, the way Britons discover, evaluate, and buy products has become more complex, yet more predictable.
Seedtag’s Shopping Season Insights 2025 reveals how understanding consumer behaviourthrough real-time signals of interest, emotion, and intent is key to connecting with audiences in moments that matter most. Between November and January, the UK’s most influential shopping season unfolds, where millions of digital interactions translate into long-term loyalty.
For marketers, success isn’t just about recognising consumer trends. It’s about understanding how UK consumers are shopping in 2025, when they convert, and what emotional cues drive their decisions.
- The Rise of the Intentional Shopper
- When UK Shoppers Convert Most
- Sectors Shaping Consumer Demand
- Gen Z and the New Age of Influence
- The Emotional Economy: Why Feelings Still Fuel Conversions
- From Insight to Action: A Playbook for 2025 and Beyond
- The Neuro-Contextual Advantage
- Context Is the New Conversion
Consumer Trends Takeaways:
- Shoppers buy with intent: UK consumers plan earlier, compare more, and expect brands to align with their values, not just offer discounts.
- Search and social drive discovery: From Google to TikTok, consumers rely on digital platforms for product recommendations and purchase validation.
- Sustainability shapes expectations: Eco-conscious decisions and transparent practices are now standard, influencing how and where people spend.
- Timing meets emotion: Conversions peak from November to January, led by logic during Black Friday and emotion at Christmas.
- Gen Z rewrites influence: Authenticity and peer recommendations matter more than traditional advertising or celebrity endorsements.
- Context is the new conversion: With Seedtag’s neuro-contextual AI, brands can connect at the exact moment consumers are most receptive.
The Rise of the Intentional Shopper
Across the UK, consumers continue to balance practicality with emotion. They’re driven by convenience and comfort, but increasingly expect brands to deliver value with purpose, from sustainable products to authentic storytelling and meaningful engagement.
Seedtag’s analysis shows that audiences begin their shopping journey earlier than ever, searching for deal previews, product comparisons, and digital exclusives well before Black Friday and Christmas. The shift reflects how early planning and emotional intent now shape consumer behaviour, revealing an audience that values preparation, not impulse.
What Defines Consumer Trends in 2025
- Search-first shopping: Search engines play a central role in discovery. Shoppers compare prices, read reviews, and bookmark pages weeks before purchase.
- Social commerce at scale: Social media has evolved from inspiration to conversion. Gen Zers in particular turn to platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for authentic product recommendations.
- Sustainability and accountability: Environmental impact continues to shape consumer behaviour. Shoppers expect sustainable choices and brands that demonstrate responsibility in both products and communications.
- Hybrid retail experiences: The boundary between digital and physical shopping is fading. Consumers browse online, explore in store, and complete purchases across multiple channels.
- Long-term value: From home upgrades to durable fashion and ethical beauty, buyers are focusing on products that align with lifestyle and longevity.
This more mature, mindful audience demands that brands move beyond demographic assumptions towards intent-led, contextual engagement rooted in emotion and timing.
When UK Shoppers Convert Most
One thing hasn’t changed: timing is everything, and still drives performance. But in 2025, the conversion curve is more nuanced.
Seedtag’s analysis highlights two key peaks in UK shopping behaviour:
- Black Friday & Cyber Monday (early November to early December): A longer window of engagement led by technology and entertainment, where discounts trigger functional value and rational decision-making.
- Christmas (mid to late December): A second peak driven by emotion, gifting, and convenience, as consumers prioritise availability and speed to secure last-minute purchases.
Notably, 24% of Christmas-related content mentions Black Friday, showing that shoppers now treat both events as part of one connected journey. This overlap provides brands with an extended opportunity to build awareness early and convert later.
Where Black Friday activations appeal to logic, focusing on price and performance, Christmas conversions are fuelled by emotion and urgency. As Seedtag’s insights confirm, understanding these emotional triggers ensures brands connect at the right moment to maximise results.
Sectors Shaping Consumer Demand
Every vertical tells a different story of intent, interest, and emotion. From tech to consumer packaged goods, Seedtag’s data shows that relevance and timing consistently outperform volume.
Technology
Smart devices, audio tech, and gaming dominate the season. Meta and Dyson lead in engagement due to exciting product launches, with fewer but more focused campaigns, while Samsung generates more content but lower impact.
Beauty
Luxury skincare and high-end cosmetics continue to engage audiences, while accessible gifting options and seasonal sets gain strong traction. Interest peaks in November and December, blending self-care with gift-giving sentiment.
Home and Interiors
Functionality and aesthetic products to liven up the home drive this category. From coffee innovation to smart appliances, engagement is highest in December and January, when audiences shift from gifting to personal lifestyle upgrades. DFS and Kärcher achieve strong results despite publishing less, proving that contextual timing matters more than frequency.
Supermarkets and FMCG
The focus on festive food, comfort, and family moments reinforces the emotional nature of this season. Tesco leads in visibility, while Lidl delivers the strongest engagement. Consumers spend more time seeking recipes and inspiration for gatherings, a great reminder that storytelling anchored in warmth and community wins attention.
Fashion
The fashion landscape blends luxury aspiration with affordability. Consumers are exploring both designer labels and accessible alternatives, from seasonal gift sets to wearable tech. Demand reflects self-expression and identity rather than price alone.
Gen Z and the New Age of Influence
Gen Z is reshaping how consumers engage with brands. They don’t just consume; they create and curate.
This generation merges shopping with entertainment, scrolling through social media for hauls, tutorials, and real-time reviews. Their purchase decisions are influenced by social proof and authenticity rather than traditional advertising.
While Millennials followed influencers, Gen Zers value peer discovery and contextual relevance. They expect brands to appear organically in the spaces they already inhabit, from editorial environments to livestream shopping experiences.
For marketers, this means shifting focus from who the consumer is to how they feel and interact. Social commerce and contextual targeting now work together to enhance the customer experience, shaping consumer demand and emotional connection.
The Emotional Economy: Why Feelings Still Fuel Conversions
While technology has simplified the path to purchase, emotion remains the most powerful consumer behavioural driver. Seedtag’s Shopping Season Insights 2025 shows that emotions influence each vertical differently:
- Tech succeeds through logic: functionality, utility, and innovation.
- Alcohol dominates Christmas due to its emotional and social associations.
- Fashion and beauty connect through identity and self-expression.
This proves that shopping is no longer transactional; it’s experiential. Every click and conversion is tied to anticipation, reward, or ritual. Brands that recognise these cues can shape moments of resonance that move audiences from awareness to action.
From Insight to Action: A Playbook for 2025 and Beyond
The shopping season may be short, but its lessons extend far beyond the holidays. As consumer trends 2025 continue to evolve, success depends on a brand’s ability to combine empathy with precision, to understand not only what people buy, but why, when, and how they decide.
This playbook turns data into direction, with six actions to help marketers connect with intent, inspire trust, and deliver lasting impact.
- Activate Early, Retarget Later
Audiences start engaging in early November. Build intent before peak moments, and retarget after to convert undecided shoppers. - Prioritise Emotion over Exposure
Focus on storytelling that mirrors real motivations, like gifting, comfort, renewal, rather than noise. - Target Context, Not Categories
Consumers connect through experiences. Blend lifestyle, tech, and culture to reflect how people actually shop. - Embed Sustainability Authentically
Transparency earns trust. Make your environmental commitments visible and credible throughout communications. - Embrace Social Commerce and Search Synergy
Social media drives discovery while search engines validate intent. Together, they shape a seamless omnichannel journey. - Optimise for Experience, Not Just Reach
Engagement depth, dwell time, and emotional impact matter more than volume, the true indicators of consumer expectations and satisfaction.
The Neuro-Contextual Advantage
As attention fragments across devices and platforms, relevance has become the strongest form of performance.
Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual AI, Liz, decodes how people think, feel, and decide. By aligning creative messaging with audience interest, intent and emotion, Liz ensures campaigns appear in premium, privacy-first environments, precisely when audiences are most receptive.
Through UK insights and neuro-contextual approach, brands can transform seasonal activations into lasting connections, predicting when shoppers will act and why they’ll care.
Learn more about Neuro-Contextual
- Pioneering Neuro-Contextual: The Next Evolution in Artificial Intelligence Advertising
- Neuro-Contextual Advertising: Winning Audiences Through Interests, Emotions and Intentions
- Passions Over Profiles: AI for Advertising
- Neuro-Contextual Advertising: From Industry Innovation to eMarketer’s Number One Trend
Context Is the New Conversion
UK consumers are more conscious, sustainable, and emotionally attuned than ever. They’re guided by discovery, validation, and value, but ultimately, by relevance.
The brands that thrive will be those that look beyond demographics, harness real-time intent, interest, and emotion, and respect the aim behind every click.
In 2025, conversion doesn’t start at checkout. It starts the moment a consumer feels understood. And in that moment, Seedtag’s neuro-contextual advertising isn't just an advantage, it’s the difference between visibility and genuine impact.
CTV vs Linear TV: What is the Difference of Connected TV and traditional?
Linear or traditional TV refers to the conventional television broadcasting model where content is delivered via satellite or cable. Content is programmed and displayed on particular channels at specific times and dates.
Connected TV (CTV), on the other hand, refers to any television set with an internet connection, offering viewers the freedom to watch content on-demand. Viewers can use smart TVs, gaming consoles, and streaming devices to access streamed content from platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, choosing from a wide range of programming, live events, and viewing options.
Key differences
- On traditional cable, content is broadcast at specific times and dates, while connected TV allows viewers to watch content on their own schedule.
- Typically, TV viewers watch programs in real-time on cable, and the content is delivered through broadcast channels. Connected TVs require an internet connection and provide content through streaming services, giving advertisers new ways to reach their target audience.
- While linear TV ad placements depend on specific times and scheduled programming, connected TV advertising offers more precision targeting. Advertisers can reach niche audiences based on demographics, interests, and viewing habits, making CTV advertising a more data-driven approach to ad spending.
- Additionally, CTV platforms allow users to interact with advertisements, creating a more engaging experience compared to linear TV. This interactive capability is a significant advantage of linear TV advertising’s digital counterpart, as it encourages higher conversion rates.
CTV vs Linear TV Advertising
Linear TV Advertising
Traditional television advertising involves placing commercials within programs by buying time slots or pods during specific commercial breaks to reach the target audience. The Designated Market Area (DMA) refers to a group of territories considered the primary television viewing area for a particular city or metropolitan region. The DMA defines the television markets, and everyone within a DMA viewing a specific channel where a brand purchases ad space will see the same commercial.
Linear TV ad placements are effective for broad audience reach but lack the precise targeting capabilities of connected TV vs. linear TV approaches. Advertisers must rely on DMA-based targeting, which can limit the effectiveness of ad spending since many viewers may fall outside the desired demographic.
CTV Advertising
CTV advertising is a form of digital advertising that involves placing ads on connected TVs like smart TVs and streaming devices. Advertisers buy ad inventory through ad exchanges or directly from CTV platforms and then place the ads within the content viewers watch on their connected TVs. This approach allows advertisers to reach their target audience with greater precision targeting by analyzing viewing habits and engagement data.
With the rising number of cord-cutters and increasing CTV viewership, advertisers are shifting their focus from traditional television advertising to connected TV advertising. CTV enables advertisers to reach highly specific demographics, ensuring that ads are delivered to relevant viewers. This capability contrasts sharply with traditional broadcast advertising, which cannot offer the same level of addressable TV precision.
While linear advertising enables advertisers to reach a wider audience base, the targeting capabilities are more limited. Advertisers cannot target niche audience segments making it difficult to target specific demographics or interests precisely. Since targeting is primarily based on DMAs, advertisers have restricted capabilities and could target segments where many viewers fall outside the desired target group.
Bagging prime-time slots for ads on traditional TV is also expensive when compared to CTV ads, and measuring campaign effectiveness is also difficult on cable as there is no access to detailed data and analytics. Advertisers only rely on traditional measurement methods like Nielsen ratings that provide a general overview of viewership.
Furthermore, CTV advertising provides real-time data and analytics, allowing advertisers to measure impressions, engagement rates, and conversions. Unlike linear TV, where success is measured through Nielsen ratings and broad estimates, connected TV advertising allows for more accurate and trackable results. This makes it easier to adjust advertising strategies and optimize campaigns in real-time.
The CTV advertising era
Unlike traditional television advertising, which broadcasts all ads to a general audience, CTV advertising enables personalization and relevance by targeting based on audience interests and viewing habits. CTV targeting focuses on an interest-based approach to effectively capture audience attention and engage them by showing viewers ads that are relevant to their preferences.
Since the ads align with a viewer’s real-time interests and you can now engage with the ads, CTV ad placements tend to lead to higher engagement and conversion rates. The ability to track key metrics like impressions, viewability, engagement rates, and conversions, makes it easier to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, optimize ads, and measure ROI.
Linear TV viewing is often passive, the engagement rates are lower, and viewers are less likely to interact with ads or take immediate action. CTV ads offer interactive capabilities that allow viewers to take action with an ad to learn more about the product or service, leading to higher levels of engagement and brand recall. The ability to target specific audiences reduces ad budget wastage on viewers who are not relevant, thus making CTV more cost-effective than traditional advertising.
CTV advertising is emerging as a preferred choice among advertisers as it empowers them with a more targeted, measurable, and engaging way to reach audiences compared to traditional advertising. CTV advertising can help maximize the effectiveness of campaigns by aligning ads with the current genre or show being watched by viewers. The ads appeal to the audience as they find them more relevant and engaging.
- Learn more about CTV advertising capabilities with Contextual TV by Seedtag.
- Additionally, register for Seedtag Academy to become an expert in all things CTV!
CTV vs Linear TV – Which is the Future of Advertising?
CTV and linear TV both have their strengths, but as consumer preferences shift towards streamed content, advertisers must adapt to these changes. While the advantages of linear TV advertising include broad audience reach and familiarity, CTV advertising offers better targeting, measurable engagement, and cost efficiency.
Additionally, comparisons highlight how CTV reduces ad budget wastage. Traditional TV ads often reach broad audiences, including many viewers who may not be interested in the product or service being advertised. In contrast, CTV’s addressable TV capabilities ensure ads are shown to the most relevant viewers, improving conversion rates and campaign effectiveness.
The growing adoption of smart TVs, gaming consoles, and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu further solidifies the dominance of connected TV in modern advertising strategies. As more TV viewers transition to digital platforms, advertisers who leverage CTV advertising will benefit from improved precision targeting, higher engagement, and a more effective return on investment. The future of advertising lies in the evolving landscape of CTV vs. linear TV, with connected TV leading the way in delivering personalized, data-driven ad experiences.
The automotive sector is entering one of its most transformative decades yet. From the rapid rise of EVs (electric vehicles) to new patterns in digital car buying, the landscape is being reshaped by evolving consumer expectations and smarter marketing technology.
But how is the automotive industry changing, and what does this mean for brands trying to connect with today’s drivers?
In the UK, the stakes have never been higher. With almost two million new cars registered in 2024 and the automotive sector forecast to double in value by 2035, opportunity is growing fast, but so is competition.
Seedtag’s latest white paper, How to Drive Marketing Success in the UK Automotive Industry, powered by our neuro-contextual AI platform Liz, analyses over 10,000 automotive-related web pages to map out the motivations, values, and intent signals shaping the next wave of automotive consumers.
Download the report to discover the up-to-date consumer trends in the automotive industry, and how neuro-contextual insights can put your brand in the driver's seat.
Key Takeaways
- Consumer expectations are reshaping the automotive industry. UK buyers are more value-driven, eco-conscious, and digitally connected, demanding vehicles that align with their lifestyles and ethics.
- Digital discovery leads to physical purchase. While 83% of buyers still close in-person deals, online research, reviews, and contextual content shape every decision.
- Marketing must move from “who” to “why.” Intent-driven insights and contextual advertising outperform demographic targeting, revealing why consumers act, not just who they are.
- Agility is essential. Seasonal intent peaks — such as EV interest in Q1 and Q4 — require real-time campaign optimisation to stay competitive.
- Privacy-first targeting is the future. Contextual AI enables precision advertising without cookies, aligning with new data regulations and consumer trust standards.
- The road ahead demands adaptability. Brands that leverage AI and neuro-contextual insights to anticipate emerging automotive consumer trends will lead the next era of marketing success.
From ‘Who’ to ‘Why’: A New Blueprint for the Car Buyer
Traditional targeting based on demographics is losing traction. The modern automotive consumer is no longer defined by who they are, but by why they buy, and when they’re ready to act.
According to the research, brand loyalty is fading fast, with only 2 in 10 UK buyers citing it as a decisive factor. Instead, environmental awareness and lifestyle alignment now play leading roles, influencing both brand choice and vehicle type.
Today’s car buyers move seamlessly between screens and moments of intent: watching EV reviews at lunch, comparing finance calculators after work, and booking test drives at the weekend.
Understanding why they engage—whether for status, practicality, or sustainability—allows brands to connect more meaningfully and time their messaging to perfection.
What’s Driving Automotive Conversations in 2025
By analysing the content people engage with, we uncover key themes across the web, revealing the shifting priorities, values, and motivations of today’s car buyers. Here are some examples:
- Luxury redefined: Innovation, personalisation, and tech integration are now as desirable as prestige.
- Everyday practicality: Cost-efficiency, reliability, and maintenance remain top of mind for mainstream buyers.
- Efficiency and control: Consumers are increasingly motivated by running costs, insurance rates, and tax savings.
- Sustainability as standard: With 60% of UK adults concerned about CO₂ emissions, environmental responsibility has become a key purchasing factor.
These themes reflect a broader shift across the global automotive industry, where consumers are demanding relevance, authenticity, and alignment with their personal values.
Learn More about how to win audiences
- Neuro-Contextual Advertising: Winning Audiences Through Interests, Emotions and Intentions
- Pioneering Neuro-Contextual: The Next Evolution in Artificial Intelligence Advertising
- Passions Over Profiles: AI for Advertising
Digital Journeys, Real Decisions
Car buying has become an omnichannel experience, but digital discovery is now firmly in the driver’s seat. Seedtag’s latest report identifies five key audience mindsets—each shaped by distinct motivations and online behaviours—that reveal how automotive advertising should evolve to drive success.
- First-Time Buyers: cautious and cost-conscious, rely heavily on forums, calculators, and user reviews.
- Young Urbans: dynamic city-living professionals, explore sustainability and connected EVs.
- Family Upgraders: focused on safety and practicality, engaging with comparison articles and test-drive videos.
- Luxury Seekers: guided by refinement and innovation, explore bespoke options and digital showrooms.
- Technophiles: early adopters, actively seek out autonomous features and AI-powered enhancements.
By aligning creative and media placement with these intent signals, brands can ensure that every impression lands at precisely the right moment in the car buyer’s journey.
How Is the Automotive Industry Changing?
The shift from traditional cars to electric and autonomous vehicles is more than technological. It's behavioural. Consumers now expect brands to deliver:
- Performance with purpose: EVs and hybrids are chosen not just for innovation, but for the statement they make.
- Intelligence and safety: Interest in autonomous driving and in-car AI systems is growing as trust builds.
- Seamless omnichannel experiences: 83% of car sales still close in person, but most of the decision-making happens online.
- Privacy-first engagement: As cookies disappear, contextual AI is redefining how brands reach audiences responsibly.
In short, automotive marketing is evolving from static messaging to real-time contextual storytelling. Driven by data, powered by emotion.
What to Expect From the Road Ahead
The future of automotive marketing will belong to brands that blend data intelligence with creative agility. The next era of success will not be about reaching everyone, it will be about reaching the right someone at the right time, with the right message.
Seedtag’s neuro-contextual AI approach helps marketers decode these micro-moments of intent, ensuring every campaign resonates with both head and heart.
To uncover the full insights: from seasonal intent curves to segment breakdowns and actionable recommendations, download Seedtag’s UK Automotive White Paper and put your brand in the driver’s seat.
The publishing industry is going through one of its most defining transformations. Attention is fragmented, competition is fierce, and artificial intelligence is reshaping how publishers create, distribute, and monetize content. Yet, amid all this disruption, one constant remains: the most successful publishers are the ones who understand their audience best.
In this episode of The Pub Way Podcast, Mike Villalobos and I spoke with Dan Benyamin, founder and CEO of Ion, about how AI is reshaping publishing, the impact of the creator economy, and what it really means to build a sustainable business model around attention.
What Matters Most — AI for publishers highlights
- Audiences still come first and publishers build a sustainable business model around attention.
- Smarter yield optimization, contextual and emotional intelligence, and predictive insights drive monetization.
- Automated video creation turns written stories into short-form videos and new ad inventory.
- The creator economy can be both competition and opportunity and repurposing long-form journalism into short videos helps publishers stay relevant.
- Build or buy combines specialized AI platforms with creative control and data ownership, and transparency is essential.
A Changing Landscape for Publishers
Dan’s career tells the story of modern adtech. As a four-time entrepreneur and former VP of Data Products at Condé Nast, he has seen the digital industry evolve from simple banner placements to data-driven ecosystems powered by artificial intelligence.
His takeaway is simple but powerful: audiences still come first. Everything else, from data pipelines to monetization tools, should revolve around creating meaningful experiences for readers. Publishers who lose sight of that connection risk being left behind, no matter how advanced their technology stack is.
Competing for Attention in a Fragmented Landscape
Publishers now find themselves in the middle of a new attention economy. On one side are the major social platforms that dominate reach. On the other, a generation of independent creators has become powerful competitors, building loyal audiences with minimal resources.
For traditional publishers, this shift can feel like a threat, but it also opens new doors. AI allows them to move faster, personalize experiences, and compete on equal terms with the creators who set the tone of online culture.
By analyzing what readers care about and how they behave, publishers can turn insights into action, adapting both content and monetization strategies in real time.
Turning AI into a Monetization Engine
Artificial intelligence is helping publishers grow revenue in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. Instead of relying solely on historical performance data, AI models identify trends, forecast demand, and optimize yield before opportunities are lost.
Here are some of the most impactful ways publishers are using AI to drive monetization:
Smarter yield optimization
AI analyzes traffic and engagement patterns to recommend pricing adjustments and increase the value of underperforming inventory.
Contextual and emotional intelligence
AI understands not just what a story is about but how it makes readers feel. This helps match ads that align with the emotional tone of the content, improving both performance and user experience.
Automated video creation
Platforms like Ion transform written stories or photo features into short-form videos, creating new ad inventory and sponsorship opportunities.
Predictive insights
Machine learning anticipates which readers are most likely to subscribe, engage, or leave, enabling faster and more personalized responses.
Through these applications, AI does not replace human creativity but amplifies it. The result is a smarter, more efficient monetization ecosystem built around audience understanding.
Learn more about AI for publishers & Monetization
- AI in Publishing: How Publishers Can Unlock Growth Through Audience-Centered Innovation
- Digital Marketing Musts for Publishers: Locking in Monetization with Brand Safety
- How Publishers Can Future-Proof Brand Safety and Revenue with the Right Advertising Supply Side Platform
Collaboration in the Creator Economy
The creator economy has redefined what it means to be a publisher. Individual creators now function as media brands, often capturing the cultural pulse faster than traditional outlets. For established publishers, this can be both competition and opportunity.
Dan believes collaboration is the key. Publishers already have trusted brands, strong editorial voices, and access to advertisers. Creators bring authenticity, community, and agility. AI can bridge the two worlds by making it easier to produce, adapt, and distribute content at scale.
Repurposing long-form journalism into short videos or co-branded pieces helps publishers stay relevant across formats while giving creators access to higher-quality storytelling. When powered by AI, this type of partnership can unlock entirely new revenue models.
Trust, Transparency, and the Rise of AI-Generated Influencers
As AI becomes part of the creative process, questions around authenticity naturally arise. We’re already seeing the emergence of AI-generated influencers, digital personalities capable of producing endless content. While these tools can be efficient, they also challenge the foundations of trust that publishers have built with their audiences.
Dan’s view is clear: transparency is essential. Audiences appreciate honesty about how technology is used. Publishers who clearly disclose AI-generated elements preserve credibility and maintain control over how their brands are perceived.
AI should enhance creativity, not disguise it. It should amplify human talent, not replace it.
Build or Buy: AI for publishers
As AI becomes more integrated into publishing, many organizations are asking whether to build their own solutions or partner with external providers. Dan’s answer is pragmatic.
Publishers are not technology companies; their true strength lies in culture, storytelling, and audience relationships. Building everything from scratch can distract from that mission. Partnering with specialized AI platforms allows teams to focus on what they do best while gaining access to innovation and scale.
The smartest approach often combines both: outsourcing infrastructure and automation while maintaining creative control and data ownership. This balance lets publishers innovate without losing their identity.
Practical Ways to Apply AI
Adopting AI does not have to mean overhauling every workflow. Many publishers start with small, high-impact projects that deliver quick results.
Some of the most effective examples include:
- Automated content tagging to improve ad targeting and user experience
- Personalized recommendations that increase engagement and session time
- Dynamic ad creatives that adapt to context and audience mood
- Predictive analytics that help forecast trends and performance
- Automated video summaries that repurpose existing assets for social media
Each of these applications generates incremental value. Together, they build a foundation for long-term, scalable monetization.
Why AI Matters for Publishers
AI is transforming how content is produced, delivered, and monetized. But beyond efficiency, it’s redefining how publishers connect with their readers and partners.
It enables privacy-first monetization models that respect user data while maximizing ad performance. It replaces manual reporting with predictive insights, helping teams anticipate trends instead of reacting to them. And it empowers publishers to offer advertisers something invaluable—relevance rooted in context rather than personal identifiers.
In a world where attention is scarce, understanding audience emotion and intent in real time has become a competitive advantage. AI gives publishers the ability to act on that understanding at scale.
As Dan summed up in our conversation, “It’s a battle for attention. You have a thousand companies fighting for a few minutes of someone’s day. Make sure you know what you’re fighting for.”
Listen to the Full Conversation
Artificial intelligence is redefining how publishers grow, compete, and connect with audiences. But technology alone is not the answer. The winners will be those who combine data, creativity, and authenticity to build stronger relationships with readers and advertisers alike.
Listen to the full episode ofThe Pub Way featuring Dan Benyamin, founder and CEO of Ion, to learn how publishers can use AI to improve monetization and stay ahead in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Television has entered a new chapter. What was once a one-way medium is now one of the most dynamic and data-driven channels in the marketing mix. As viewers move from traditional TV to streaming, CTV ads are reshaping how audiences are reached and how content is monetized.
The numbers tell the story. As of 2024, over 115 million U.S. households consume television through connected devices, representing nearly 88 percent of all homes. That is not a trend; it is a complete redefinition of attention.
CTV Ads: Highlights
- CTV advertising blends TV impact with digital precision: targetable, measurable, and optimizable in real time.
- Reach the right viewers using demographics, interests, and content-viewing behavior to reduce guesswork and waste.
- Spend smarter with programmatic buying that optimizes price, location, co-viewing, relevance, and cross-screen ROI.
- Measure what matters with real-time analytics—impressions, completion rates, conversions—and benefit from higher attention than linear TV.
- Tackle fragmentation with first-party data, unified identity and measurement, and contextual targeting for privacy-safe relevance.
From Cable to Connection
For years, television revolved around reach. Brands bought airtime, crossed their fingers, and measured success with broad estimates. But the streaming era changed everything.
CTV advertising brings together two worlds that once lived apart: the impact of television and the precision of digital. With internet-connected TVs, ads can be targeted, measured, and optimized in real time.
This means advertisers can finally understand who saw their ad, how they engaged, and whether that exposure led to real action. It is still TV, but it behaves like digital.
Why Advertisers Are Moving to CTV
Let’s be honest. It is not just about following the audience. It is about efficiency, accountability, and more thoughtful engagement.
CTV ads allow brands to:
Reach the right viewers
Unlike traditional TV, CTV uses audience signals, such as demographics, interests, and content-viewing behavior. Advertisers can deliver messages that make sense in the moment rather than relying on guesswork or broadstroke targeting.
Spend smarter
Programmatic buying makes every impression count by optimizing signals for price, location, high-intention, co-viewing, audience relevance, and cross-screen ROI
Measure what matters
With real-time analytics, advertisers track impressions, completion rates, and conversions. The gap between storytelling and measurable outcomes is finally closing.
And there is another layer. Attention on CTV is higher than on linear TV. Viewers actively choose what to watch, making ads more likely to be noticed and remembered.
Learn More about CTV Ads
- How to Advertise on CTV: Streaming Into the Future for Brands and Publishers
- CTV vs Linear TV: How is CTV advertising different from Linear TV?
- A “Break” Down of Ad Breaks: Understanding CTV Ad Pods
- Closing the CTV Measurement Gap: Data Quality & Performance Talks
What CTV Means for Publishers
If CTV is a revolution for advertisers, it is a lifeline for publishers.
As streaming consumption grows, ad-supported models are generating new, sustainable revenue streams. Major platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video now include ad tiers, and viewers are embracing them.
For publishers, CTV advertising unlocks:
More monetization opportunities
Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls, homescreen spots, and pause ads offer flexibility, while premium ad-supported tiers generate recurring revenue without relying on subscriptions.
Premium value for premium content
Streaming viewers are intentional about what they watch. This attention translates into higher retention and stronger CPMs for publishers who can offer brand-safe, high-quality environments.
Cross-device consistency
With identity spines that include HHIDs, CTV can integrate with mobile and desktop campaigns, giving publishers a unified, omnichannel narrative that keeps audiences engaged across screens.
The result is a more balanced ecosystem where publishers are not only storytellers but strategic partners in delivering measurable, relevant advertising.
The Data Challenge Everyone Is Talking About
Still, growth brings complexity. The CTV advertising ecosystem faces its biggest challenge in one word: fragmentation.
Data lives across multiple platforms, formats are not standardized, and measurement practices vary widely. This leads to ad repetition, limited transparency, and difficulties in tracking performance across devices.
But there is good news. The industry is moving fast to fix it.
Collaboration among advertisers, publishers, and tech partners is leading to unified measurement and identity frameworks.
Contextual targeting is making a comeback, using content signals rather than personal data to reach audiences with relevance and respect.
These advances are not just technical upgrades. They are the foundation of a healthier advertising ecosystem.
From Streaming to Strategy
CTV is no longer just a way to deliver video content. It has become a strategic platform where brands compete for attention, measure performance in real time, and optimize investment with precision. It is the place where storytelling and outcomes finally come together, where reach gains relevance, and where media buying starts with the audience and ends with measurable impact.
For advertisers, this means campaigns that perform and connect without wasting impressions. For publishers, it means monetizing intentional viewing with more control and higher value. And for audiences, it means seeing ads that feel timely, respectful, and worth watching.
CTV is not just a continuation of television. It is a new model for how advertising works and where it is headed.
Connected TV (CTV) no longer needs an introduction. With more than 70% of U.S. households now owning at least one connected device, the shift from linear to streaming has transformed how audiences consume content and how advertisers connect with them.
CTV has quickly become the viewer’s favorite. On-demand access, flexibility, and a vast library of content have made it the natural replacement for traditional television. By 2024, viewership was already set to surpass 55 million in the U.S., with strong growth projected into 2025. This growth is not just about scale, it is also about transformation. Unlike linear TV, where advertising was based on broad demographic assumptions and limited measurement, CTV opens the door to personalized, trackable, and outcome-driven campaigns.
This evolution presents advertisers with unprecedented opportunities:
- Personalization: Ads tailored to viewing habits, interests, and purchase behavior.
- Measurement: KPIs such as reach, impressions, completion rates, CPCV, conversions, and incrementality deliver clarity on performance.
- Accountability: Unlike linear TV, CTV allows near real-time optimizations and outcome tracking.
But with opportunity comes complexity. The audience is fragmented across smart TVs, gaming consoles, set-top boxes, and streaming apps. Advertisers must learn to navigate this new ecosystem, master new tools, and rethink benchmarks to know whether their campaigns are truly working.
Against this backdrop, Episode 44 of AdTech Heroes welcomes Andy Beames, VP of Enterprise Partnerships at Samba TV, who breaks down how changing behaviors, IP-delivered data, and omnichannel extensions are rewriting the rules of TV measurement.
Below, we highlight the most critical takeaways from the conversation, enriched with insights on KPIs and contextual strategies that every advertiser should have in their playbook.
Key Highlights: Winning Audiences in the New Era of TV Measurement
- The shift from linear to CTV has redefined advertising — bringing personalization, measurable outcomes, and real-time optimization.
- IP-delivered data enables unified, privacy-safe measurement across platforms, turning fragmentation into actionable insight.
- CTV now drives both awareness and performance, allowing advertisers to measure outcomes like visits, downloads, and conversions.
- Complementing linear with CTV and digital video unlocks incremental reach and cost efficiency across audiences.
- Contextual TV and omnichannel data help advertisers connect meaningfully with underexposed households, ensuring campaigns are relevant, transparent, and outcome-driven.
TV Measurement at a Crossroads
Generational shifts are reshaping viewing. For younger audiences, Netflix and YouTube dominate the TV landscape. For viewers over 35, broadcasters still lead. This divergence means advertisers can no longer assume that a TV buy will reach a balanced spread of households.
Andy Beames points to recent BARB and Evan Shapiro data that highlight this split. Among 16–34s, the top three channels are Netflix, YouTube, and BBC, with no commercial broadcasters in the top tier. Among 35+, the top four remain broadcasters and pay TV. In other words, the value of broadcast airtime for younger audiences is rapidly diminishing, while for older demographics it still holds.
Measurement is not a call to action for the future, it is already evolving. Agencies and publishers are experimenting with new methodologies, incorporating clean rooms, and testing independent adtech tools to capture performance more holistically.
From IP Delivered Viewing to IP Delivered Data
IP delivery fractured attention, but also created the data to solve the problem. With Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and other IP-based technologies, planners can:
- Connect broadcast, AVOD, SVOD, and social exposure at the household level.
- Use clean rooms to match datasets securely and respect privacy.
- Build unified measurement frameworks across devices and platforms.
As Andy explains, IP delivered content is both the problem and the solution. It has splintered viewing into multiple services, but it also generates the granular data advertisers need to stitch audiences back together.
When TV Drives Outcomes
Traditionally, TV was the channel for fame and reach. It built awareness at scale, but direct response and outcome metrics were limited. Today, CTV supports outcomes more typical of digital:
- Website visits and conversions
- App downloads and installs
- Store visits and purchases
This shift expands the role of TV. Advertisers no longer choose between brand or performance. They can measure both. Direct response advertisers who once relied exclusively on social platforms are now testing TV with DR-style KPIs, and brand advertisers are layering outcomes onto their traditional metrics.
The result is a richer, more flexible planning process where TV can play at every stage of the funnel.
Learn More
- Closing the CTV Measurement Gap: Data Quality & Performance Talks
- A “Break” Down of Ad Breaks: Understanding CTV Ad Pods
- What is FAST TV & Why Marketers Are Tuning In to CTV Opportunities
- Why the oRTB Content Object is Key for Programmatic TV
Linear’s Incremental Reach Problem
One of the most striking insights from Samba’s State of Viewership report is that 92% of linear impressions in the UK reach only half of households.
The implication is clear: heavy TV viewers absorb the vast majority of impressions, creating high frequency but limited incremental reach. For advertisers, the cost of finding new or light viewers through linear alone becomes prohibitively expensive.
The solution is to complement linear with CTV, YouTube, and the open web. These environments allow brands to reach audiences who are underexposed or absent from traditional TV, often at a lower incremental cost.
Where Ad Tiers Fit Today
Premium streamers like Netflix and Disney Plus have launched ad tiers, signaling a new frontier for advertisers. However, inventory is still limited and CPMs are high. Andy notes that these tiers are best positioned for brand budgets, offering reach to audiences that are otherwise unreachable through broadcast.
For performance-driven campaigns, broader CTV supply and open web video remain essential. They provide the scale, price flexibility, and targeting precision needed to balance cost efficiency with measurable outcomes.
The CTV KPI Toolkit
To evaluate campaigns effectively, advertisers must combine traditional TV metrics with digital-style KPIs:
- Reach and Impressions: Who saw the ad, and how often
- Viewability and Completion Rate: Were ads actually watched
- CPCV and Conversions: What was the cost per complete view, and did it drive actions
- Incrementality: What additional value did CTV bring compared with other channels
Beyond campaign KPIs, advertisers should also track consequential effects like website traffic, share of voice, time on site, leads, and brand lift. This broader perspective helps prove not only whether ads ran but whether they made an impact on business outcomes.
The real advantage of CTV is the ability to tie exposure to both attention metrics and conversion metrics, delivering a more comprehensive view of ROI.
Omnichannel Reach Extension with Context
Advertisers increasingly ask how to find the households that linear misses.
This is where Contextual TV plays a key role:
- Targeting beyond genres: Align ads to the themes, topics, and emotions of the content viewers are watching, not just broad categories.
- Comprehensive reporting: Blend classic CTV KPIs with incrementality and attention metrics.
- Objective led creative: Formats designed to capture attention and drive specific outcomes.
By combining contextual intelligence with omnichannel data, advertisers can close the linear gap, connect with viewers in relevant moments, and deliver campaigns that are both efficient and meaningful.
Looking Ahead: TV measurement
Three shifts will define it's next phase :
- Greater transparency of metadata so advertisers can verify placement, brand safety, and outcomes.
- Cleaner and interoperable datasets that respect privacy while enabling cross-screen planning.
- Outcome-aware benchmarks that treat TV as a multi-role channel, balancing reach, attention, and concrete business impact.
The cultural shift also matters. Andy emphasizes the importance of flexibility and empathy not only in hybrid work but also in how teams collaborate across TV, digital, and analytics. Measurement is technical, but the strategies that succeed are built on collaboration and shared understanding.
Tune In to the Full Episode
For a deeper dive into data quality, reach extension, and outcome-based TV, listen to AdTech Heroes Episode 44: “The New Rules of TV Measurement” with Andy Beames (Samba TV).
Want to become an expert in all things CTV? Explore Contextual TV and register for Seedtag Academy to learn how to measure success, target beyond genres, and design creatives built for attention.
From scanning pages to understanding people
For decades, advertising has relied on demographics and behavioral profiles to reach audiences. Age, gender, income brackets, cookie trails, broad labels that reduce people to categories. But none of us fit neatly into those boxes. Our identities are shaped by unique passions, emotions, and intentions that demographics alone cannot capture.
Contextual targeting emerged as a privacy-safe alternative, matching ads to keywords, URLs and category labels to deliver scalable reach and brand safety, particularly on the open web. It was effective at the top of the funnel, but its foundation was classification. It could identify what a piece of content was about, not why a consumer engaged with it.
Advertising needed to evolve. Advances in neuroscience and AI opened the door to a new approach: moving beyond labels to understand the deeper drivers of attention and decision-making. This is the foundation of Seedtag’s neuro-contextual advertising, an approach designed to deliver campaigns that feel timely, resonate emotionally, and achieve measurable outcomes while remaining fully privacy-first.
Winning Audiences: Key Highlights
- Moving beyond demographics, neuro-contextual advertising taps into passions, emotions, and intentions in real time for privacy-first, relevant campaigns.
- Interest captures attention, emotion enhances recall, and intention drives action—together powering full-funnel impact.
- Agentic AI transforms insights into dynamic activation, aligning content, audiences, and creative with contextual signals.
- Advertisers win audiences by moving beyond stereotypes, creating ads that resonate deeply, feel human, and deliver measurable outcomes.
Why passions matter more than profiles
On paper, demographics can make us look predictable. Traditional demographic targeting would drop someone into a box and serve generic products. But real people are more complex. Their passions, values and intentions go far beyond labels.
As Brian Danzis, Chief Revenue Officer at Seedtag, explained in a recent blog post about AI for Advertising:
“Traditional demographic targeting would drop me into a “male, 45–54, suburban” box and push sports cars or generic gadgets. Liz’s neuro-contextual targeting sees the chef, the cyclist, and the environmental steward—and serves me organic food products, sustainable gear, boutique travel experiences, and brands that share my values.”
This is exactly where Seedtag’s neuro-contextual advertising shows its strength. By combining neuroscience principles with Agentic AI, it interprets interest, emotion and intent in real time, moving beyond classification to understand how people think, engage and decide.
At the heart of this approach is Liz, our proprietary neuro-contextual AI. Liz mirrors the sophistication of human thought by interpreting deeper signals in real time and delivering high-quality, privacy-first, full-funnel advertising across premium CTV, video and the open web. Because Liz is developed entirely in-house, we have full control over its evolution, ensuring our technology stays ahead in the privacy-first era without relying on third-party tracking or personal data.
How do interest, emotion, and intention drive superior outcomes?
At the core of neuro-contextual are three main principles that explain how advertising can capture attention, build affinity and drive action more effectively.
- Interest captures attention. When ads are placed in contexts that are relevant and familiar, they are processed more fluently. This congruence between message and environment makes them easier to notice, understand and remember.
- Emotion enhances recall and brand affinity. Emotional stimuli do not just attract attention, they command it. Content associated with positive feelings generates stronger responses, boosting both memory and decision-making. Ads placed in these environments benefit from a halo effect, building deeper brand connections.
- Intention drives engagement and action. When people are in a goal-directed state, their focus narrows to information that feels relevant to their journey. By aligning with this stage in real time, brands can activate intent at the exact moment when consumers are ready to explore, compare or convert.
When these three forces converge, advertising creates meaningful outcomes across the full funnel, always within the boundaries of evolving privacy standards.
The role of Agentic AI
Neuro-contextual technology can be thought of as the brain: it interprets signals of interest, emotion, and intent with a human-like understanding of content. But it reaches its full potential when paired with Agentic AI, which acts as the body that transforms these insights into meaningful action across the entire campaign lifecycle.
With an intuitive, conversational interface, Agentic AI dynamically:
- Aligns campaign goals with the most relevant content environments.
- Builds custom audiences based on genuine engagement patterns rather than predefined segments.
- Continuously adapts creative and messaging to resonate with the emotional tone of each placement.
This combination of neuro-contextual intelligence and agentic-driven activation has transformed contextual advertising from an advanced targeting tactic into a fully integrated media solution for privacy-first advertising.
Learn more about winning audiences
- Targeting Intention: Reshaping Performance Marketing with Custom Intent Audiences
- Pushing the Boundaries of the AI Revolution in Advertising
- What is Agentic AI And How is Transforming Digital Advertising
- Passions Over Profiles: AI for Advertising
Why this matters for advertisers
For advertisers, the promise of neuro-contextual goes far beyond improved targeting. It reshapes how campaigns are built, activated and optimized, delivering impact across the entire funnel while respecting user privacy.
- Privacy-first by design. Relevance delivered without third-party data, cookies or invasive profiling, ensuring campaigns stay compliant in an era of stricter regulation.
- Human-like contextual understanding. AI trained to comprehend text, images and video content in a way that mirrors how people naturally process information, enabling scalable strategies across CTV, premium video and the open web.
- Emotionally and semantically aligned ads. Campaigns resonate with the why behind user engagement, not just the what of content recognition.
- Higher attention and recall. Neuroscience shows that relevance is a cognitive metric: familiar, context-congruent stimuli are processed more fluently and with more positivity, leading to stronger engagement and receptivity.
- Smarter decisions and strategic opportunities. With Agentic AI activating insights instantly, campaigns adapt continuously to context and audience signals for greater efficiency and measurable outcomes. Through Liz Agent, advertisers can unlock opportunities pre-launch and optimize across every stage of the campaign lifecycle, from planning and execution to delivery and learnings.
A smarter, more human era of advertising
Advertising has always tried to understand people, what they care about, how they feel and what they intend to do. For years, demographics and behavioral profiles reduced that complexity into categories and keywords. But today, we can go further.
With neuro-contextual advertising, brands can connect through what truly matters: people’s interests, emotions and intentions. It is advertising that feels timely, resonates deeply and delivers measurable outcomes while protecting privacy.
Emotion may be advertising’s oldest lever and now it is also its newest frontier. The best campaigns have always done more than inform. They moved us. They made us feel. And for the first time, we can measure and optimize for that too.
It is time to leave stereotypes behind and build campaigns that understand rather than interrupt. The future of advertising is more relevant, more human and more effective.
Discover how Seedtag’s neuro-contextual advertising can help your brand win audiences through their interests, emotions and intentions. Learn more here.
Halloween goes beyond costumes and candy
Halloween has moved far beyond a one-day celebration. Today it stretches across entertainment, shopping, digital platforms and seasonal traditions, creating one of the richest periods for brands to connect with audiences.
Streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime Video and Shudder fuel the fascination with horror and supernatural genres, while events ranging from pumpkin patches and autumn fairs to large-scale haunted attractions bring communities together. Conversations peak not only around trick-or-treating, but also themed snacks, viral costumes, seasonal décor and movie marathons.
The scale speaks for itself:
In the weeks leading up to October 31st, Halloween content generated over 69,000 articles and more than 3.1 million visits, with an average presence score of 4.0 across media.
This confirms Halloween’s status not just as a seasonal holiday, but as a cultural phenomenon where entertainment, commerce and community converge.
Key Takeaways from Halloween Advertising Campaigns
- Brands can leverage neuro-contextual advertising to align campaigns with audiences’ passion, emotion, and intent.
- Halloween has evolved into a cultural phenomenon spanning entertainment, shopping, and community experiences.
- Key drivers include haunted attractions, fall activities, movies/streaming, candy, costumes, and décor.
- Candy and costumes mix nostalgia with creativity, fueling both tradition and DIY expression.
- Horror movies and streaming platforms anchor seasonal storytelling, keeping Halloween relevant for all ages.
The hidden map of Halloween conversations
When we look at the universe of Halloween content, some themes clearly dominate. Events and attractions lead the way, representing more than 40% of the conversation with over 16,000 articles and 637,000 visits. From pumpkin patches and farm festivals to Disneyland’s Oogie Boogie Bash and the Bronx Zoo’s Pumpkin Nights, audiences are leaning into experiences that combine festivity with community.
Close behind are fall activities and events with 14,000 articles and nearly 800,000 visits. Seasonal outings like apple picking, autumn fairs and even skywatching around the Hunter’s Moon have become part of the extended rituals, with brands like Time Out and Space.com shaping how audiences plan these experiences.
Movies and streaming also play a central role, generating 15,000+ articles and over 876,000 visits. Horror dominates the screen, from classics on Prime Video to cult hits from A24, with Netflix and Shudder cementing their place as go-to destinations for seasonal scares.
And of course, no Halloween is complete without candy, costumes and décor. These conversations are not just about what to buy, but about rituals of preparation: baking spooky recipes, crafting DIY décor, or curating the perfect outfit for the big night.
What emerges is not a single theme but a complex ecosystem of passions, one where entertainment, food and community overlap to create meaning.
Candy: nostalgia wrapped in chocolate
Halloween candy is more than sugar, it is tradition. Year after year, classics like Kit Kat, Reese’s and Snickers dominate conversations, but the real story is how these treats get reimagined. Homemade recipes turn candy into dirt pudding, puppy chow or monster themed snacks designed for parties and classroom fun.
This blend of nostalgic favorites and creative reinterpretations shows how candy fuels not just indulgence but participation. It is about crafting moments to share, whether with kids knocking on doors or friends gathering for a horror movie night.
Costumes and décor: DIY meets spectacle
Costumes have always been the centerpiece of Halloween, but the conversation today is broader. Beyond superheroes and princesses, people are embracing DIY culture mixing creativity with affordability. A red cape, some face paint, or even a pumpkin pillow can be enough to transform a living room into a Halloween set.
Decor too reflects this blend of personal expression and tradition. From fall garlands and skeletons to Pinterest worthy table settings, people are not just buying items, they are curating experiences. Halloween becomes a canvas for creativity, mixing the spooky with the playful and the homemade with the spectacular.
Movies: the heartbeat of Halloween storytelling
No other category cements the Halloween mood like movies. Seasonal classics such as Hocus Pocus, The Addams Family and The Haunted Mansion still dominate living rooms, while franchises like Halloween or Scream continue to evolve with new releases.
The cluster around horror movies and streaming reflects this passion, with 28% of visits concentrated here. From Netflix originals to A24’s critically acclaimed titles, audiences keep returning to horror as a defining ritual of the season.
At the same time, new productions and next gen horror directors keep the genre alive, attracting younger audiences and ensuring that Halloween remains both nostalgic and forward looking.
Activities: from festivals to school crafts
Halloween is no longer a one night affair. Autumn activities such as fairs, wine tastings and school crafts now form part of the extended rituals. Families explore fall outings, while kids bring the holiday spirit into everyday life.
Festivals and parties, from Mickey’s Halloween Party to Wicked Haunt Fest with its haunted walk throughs and beer gardens, showcase how Halloween thrives as a shared experience, something that unites generations, cultures and even brands looking to connect with audiences in festive, inclusive ways.
Haunted attractions and pop culture crossovers
Another cluster of interest is haunted attractions and spooky characters, generating over 317,000 visits. From New York’s Blood Manor to immersive exhibits like Dark Matter at Mercer Labs, audiences crave experiences that blend fear, art and entertainment.
Halloween also intersects with broader entertainment culture. Conversations around comics and entertainment clusters highlight Marvel, DC and Disney+ as cultural anchors, where superheroes, spooky storylines and cinematic universes merge with Halloween themes.
Learn more about Audience Insights and Marketing Performance
- Brand Marketing vs Performance Marketing: Why Full-Funnel Collaboration Matters More Than Ever.
- Driving Growth in a Shifting Market: Strategic Insights for Automotive Marketing Success.
- Targeting Intention: Reshaping Performance Marketing with Custom Intent Audiences.
- Revving Up Growth: Deep Audience Insights for Automotive Advertising Success.
How brands can connect with meaning
This is exactly where neuro-contextual advertising makes a difference. By combining neuroscience principles with Agentic AI, it interprets interest, emotion and intent in real time, moving beyond classification to understand how people think, engage and decide.
Behind these connections is Liz, our proprietary neuro-contextual AI. By mirroring the sophistication of human thought, Liz interprets deeper signals in real time and delivers high quality, privacy first, full funnel advertising across premium CTV, video and the open web. By decoding interest, emotion and intent, Liz helps brands align their campaigns with the very moments when people are most open to engagement.
Halloween as a lesson in relevance
Halloween proves that people’s passions are richer than any demographic profile. They are not just parents or students, men or women, Gen Z or Gen X. They are movie buffs, DIY decorators, chocolate lovers and festival goers.
By understanding these signals, brands can move beyond stereotypes and build connections that feel personal, emotional and timely. Neuro-contextual advertising offers the tools to do this at scale, while respecting privacy and ensuring campaigns are both effective and responsible.
Because in the end, Halloween is not only about costumes and candy. It is about shared rituals, creativity and community, and how brands that join those moments can truly resonate
Discover how Seedtag’s neuro-contextual advertising can help your brand win audiences through their interests, emotions and intentions. Learn more here.
In the evolving world of digital advertising, publishers face a balancing act. On one side is the need to maximize inventory monetization through programmatic advertising. On the other is growing pressure to protect user privacy and maintain brand safety across platforms. As cookies are phased out and new expectations from both audiences and advertisers take shape, publishers are reassessing their strategies starting with the role their advertising supply side platform (SSP) plays.
While first-party data and alternative targeting tactics have gained attention, one of the most effective paths forward is often overlooked: using a supply side platform built to deliver both performance and protection. Today, publishers need solutions that not only optimize fill rates and CPMs, but also prioritize context, relevance, and trust.
This post explores how a privacy-first advertising supply side platform can help publishers meet their business goals without compromising user experience or advertiser confidence.
The Changing Landscape for Publishers and Advertisers
As concerns around data privacy become more pronounced, publishers are under pressure to find monetization strategies that don’t rely on tracking users across the web. Audience targeting based on third-party cookies is fading, and in its place, new models are emerging that prioritize transparency and intent over personal data.
This shift has real economic consequences. According to industry research, publishers risk losing up to 60% of their revenue if they fail to transition away from third-party data. This makes it critical to rethink how ad inventory is packaged and sold, especially through programmatic channels.
Enter the modern advertising supply side platform. By rethinking how data is used (and more importantly, how it's not used) publishers can begin to align with the demands of both audiences and advertisers, without sacrificing scale or revenue.
How SSP Advertising Supports Brand Safety and Monetization
The core function of an advertising supply side platform is to help publishers make their inventory accessible to multiple demand sources, including networks, ad exchanges, and demand side platforms (DSPs). But not all SSPs are created equal. The right platform does more than connect publishers with buyers. It enables them to apply sophisticated controls to ensure ad placements meet both commercial and editorial standards.
Brand safety is a central part of this. Publishers need to ensure that ads shown on their sites reflect the tone, values, and credibility of their content. Poorly matched or inappropriate ads not only reduce user trust, but can also drive advertisers away.
A high-performing SSP should support this balance by offering tools that help:
- Filter out unsuitable demand sources
- Analyze content in real time using AI in publishing
- Enable granular control over ad placement
- Match ad formats to user behavior
- Support real time bidding without compromising editorial integrity
This allows publishers to maintain high standards while optimizing monetization, even as the traditional models of behavioral targeting lose relevance.
The Role of AI in Publishing and Brand Safety
Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in how SSPs operate, particularly when it comes to ensuring brand safety and targeting precision. AI in publishing makes it possible to move beyond basic keyword matching and start analyzing context in a more human-like way.
Rather than relying on predefined taxonomies or user tracking, AI-enabled SSPs can interpret the content of an article, video, or image, assess sentiment, and understand user intent. This enables more accurate ad placement, improving both relevance and safety.
For publishers, this means greater control over which ads are shown, where they appear, and how they align with content. For advertisers, it provides confidence that their brand is represented in a meaningful, appropriate environment.
By integrating these capabilities into their SSP, publishers are able to deliver value to advertisers while keeping their own editorial and user standards intact.
Why Publishers Should Consider Upgrading Their SSP
As audience expectations shift and advertisers demand more transparency, publishers are discovering that legacy platforms may no longer meet their needs. Traditional SSPs often focus narrowly on maximizing fill rates, with limited ability to enforce context-based targeting or support real-time editorial decision-making.
An upgraded supply side platform should offer publishers:
- Real time analysis of inventory and context
- Better support for programmatic advertising models
- Compatibility with advanced ad formats, including video
- AI-powered tools for context, sentiment, and intent classification
- Built-in brand safety controls and content filters
- Clear integration with DSPs to sell ad inventory efficiently
These features make it easier for publishers to align their ad inventory with high-quality demand, while reducing the risks associated with mismatched placements or irrelevant targeting. In effect, the SSP becomes not just a sales engine, but a safeguard for both performance and reputation.
Maximizing Ad Revenue Without Sacrificing Experience
The traditional tension in digital advertising has been between scale and relevance. Publishers are often asked to choose between running high volumes of ads or ensuring that each impression delivers real value to the user and the advertiser.
A modern SSP breaks that tradeoff. By combining real time bidding with contextual analysis, publishers can match ad space with relevant creative in a way that doesn’t compromise the user experience. When an ad appears alongside content that aligns with the user’s intent or emotional state, it is more likely to drive engagement, improve recall, and lead to conversions.
From a monetization perspective, this allows publishers to:
- Increase CPMs by offering more relevant ad inventory
- Package niche or premium content for targeted campaigns
- Provide advertisers with more precise targeting options
- Improve fill rates across various channels, including header bidding and video
This integrated approach benefits the entire advertising ecosystem, from publishers and advertisers to the end user.
Contextual Intelligence Over Behavioral Tracking
A key reason contextual advertising has become more important is its ability to connect content and ads without relying on behavioral profiles. While many publishers are experimenting with email addresses, device IDs, or IP-based segmentation, these tactics still come with privacy concerns and regulatory risk.
By contrast, a supply side platform that uses contextual AI can deliver high-performance campaigns without requiring user data. This not only protects audience privacy but also helps future-proof the publisher’s business model.
When contextual advertising is backed by strong AI and built into the SSP itself, it becomes scalable. Publishers can categorize articles, videos, and other content types in real time, allowing for smarter placement of creative based on subject matter, tone, and even visual cues.
This supports better performance metrics across the board, including ad recall, time on page, and brand perception, while helping advertisers target audiences based on what they care about in the moment, not who they are across the web.
From Strategy to Execution: How Publishers Can Get Started
The first step in upgrading your approach is aligning with an advertising supply side platform that supports advanced contextual capabilities. From there, publishers can begin to:
- Define clear goals for ad performance and brand safety
- Map inventory against content categories and user interests
- Test contextual campaigns with a variety of ad formats
- Identify keywords and topics that perform well across verticals
- Use video and high-impact formats to drive engagement
With the right SSP in place, it becomes much easier to manage both the operational and technical requirements of running a privacy-first, performance-driven advertising strategy.
In a digital environment where both users and advertisers demand more accountability, publishers can no longer rely on outdated tools or data-driven models that lack transparency.
By upgrading to an SSP built for modern standards, publishers gain the flexibility, control, and insight needed to thrive. Whether it’s optimizing programmatic performance, enhancing brand safety, or protecting user experience, the SSP plays a critical role in the publisher’s toolkit.
Want to learn more? Discover how Seedtag helps publishers future-proof their advertising strategies with an AI-powered neuro-contextual approach that balances relevance and results.
In a world where privacy reshapes how we measure and connect, digital advertising is undergoing a quiet but fundamental shift. The traditional approach of identifying users and following them around the web is giving way to something more precise, more respectful, and ultimately more effective: targeting intention.
At the center of this evolution are custom intent audiences. Unlike demographic or interest-based segments, these audiences are built around real-time purpose. They don't rely on who users are, but on what users are trying to do in the moment. For advertisers navigating a post-cookie landscape and rising expectations for both relevance and privacy, the change to intent-based marketing couldn't be more timely.
Custom Intent Audiences vs. Traditional Segments: What Makes the Difference?
Traditional audience segments work by assigning users to broad groups based on past behavior or assumed interests. A user who once browsed for electric cars might continue receiving related ads for weeks, even if their focus has shifted elsewhere. Custom intent audiences, by contrast, start with the present. They identify users based on the content they are actively consuming (articles, product comparisons, search behaviors…) and match that with the user’s likely intention.
This present-tense approach makes custom intent audiences inherently more relevant. It’s the difference between assuming someone is interested in fitness because they follow a sports brand on social media, and recognizing they’re ready to buy running shoes because they’re comparing prices on review pages.
The outcome? More qualified impressions, less wasted spend, and a clearer path to performance.
From Identity to Intention: Privacy-First Precision
One of the main advantages of custom intent audiences is how well they fit within today’s privacy-first advertising landscape.
Unlike identity-based models that depend on cookies or device IDs, intention-based targeting doesn’t need to know who a user is. It only needs to understand what they’re doing.
This difference isn’t just technical but philosophical. Instead of building user profiles based on long-term surveillance, advertisers are focusing on real-time, in-the-moment signals. These include the depth and structure of content, the tone and sentiment of the page, and the user’s position in their decision-making journey.
By using AI models trained to read these signals in real time, advertisers can detect not just interest, but readiness. And they can do so without compromising user privacy.
The Metrics That Matter
Performance is still the goal. And here, the numbers speak for themselves. When global automotive brand Nissan adopted Seedtag’s intention-based strategy to promote its C-SUV category, the results were substantial:
- A 67% reduction in Cost Per Qualified Visit (CPQV).
- A 34% drop in Cost Per Lead (CPL).
- A threefold increase in qualified visits against target.
What made the difference was simple. Ads were served only when users were showing active signals of intent; not just reading about cars, but comparing models, evaluating financing, or locating dealerships. In doing so, Nissan avoided mid-funnel waste and focused their investment where it had the most impact.
Across industries, similar results are emerging. Campaigns that embrace custom intent audiences consistently outperform those relying on static segments, particularly when it comes to mid- and lower-funnel outcomes.
Aligning Creative with Intention
Reaching the right user in the right moment is only part of the equation. The creative needs to match that moment too. When advertisers target based on intention, the creative strategy must follow suit. Messaging that resonates in a high-intent context looks different than messaging designed for awareness or passive browsing.
For example, a user reading general reviews about smartphones might respond well to informative, value-driven creative. But a user comparing two models side-by-side, looking at specifications or price breakdowns, is further along the journey. In that context, the ad should be clear, action-oriented, and directly aligned with the decision at hand.
This is where Seedtag’s AI intention models play a dual role. Not only do they assess the user’s intent, they also measure how relevant the campaign’s messaging is for that moment. By calculating both an Intention Score and a Campaign Relevance Score, Seedtag’s system ensures that ads appear not just when users are ready to act, but when the message is most likely to land.
This alignment between content, mindset, and creative is what turns impressions into outcomes.
The Case for Rethinking Audience Strategy
Marketers have spent years optimizing for attention by measuring viewability, maximizing impressions, and expanding reach. But attention alone doesn’t drive performance. Without intention, attention is passive. It doesn’t necessarily signal interest, and it rarely signals readiness.
Custom intent audiences offer a way to bridge that gap. They allow advertisers to:
- Replace volume with precision.
- Move beyond proxy metrics to actionable insight.
- Increase qualified engagement without relying on personal data.
In short, they bring intentionality into targeting, in a move that’s both ethically sound and commercially effective.
Where to Begin: Turning Strategy Into Skill
Custom intent audiences are a feature that represents a mindset shift. One that requires new ways of planning, measuring, and creating. For advertisers looking to make that shift, knowledge is the first step.
That’s why Seedtag has launched a new certification through Seedtag Academy: “Targeting Intention.” This program unpacks everything from the foundations of intent-based targeting to the role of AI in modeling user mindset in real time.
It’s designed for marketers who want to:
- Understand how intention works across the funnel.
- Activate privacy-first strategies that don’t sacrifice performance.
- Build creative that speaks to purpose, not just persona.
Whether you're in strategy, media, creative, or analytics, the course provides a practical framework for applying intention in real campaigns.
You’ll learn why performance now depends on understanding not who users are, but what they’re trying to do, and how you can meet them there.
Enroll in the Seedtag Academy Certification
If you're ready to move beyond identity and start targeting real-time purpose, the new Seedtag Academy certification on “Targeting Intention” is now open. Learn how to activate campaigns that perform better, cost less, and respect your audience. Discover the full course and enroll today.
Back to School is more than the return of classes and new supplies. It is a cultural reset that sparks consumer activity across fashion, technology, nutrition, and family life. Each year, this season mobilizes millions of students, parents, and educators who are making purchase decisions with purpose and intention.
For advertisers, 2025 offers a unique opportunity to connect with audiences who are actively shaping their routines and priorities. The season reflects a blend of family needs, digital-first lifestyles, and rising expectations for health, comfort, and value.
Seedtag’s neuro-contextual AI, Liz, decodes how people think, engage, and decide, empowering advertisers to truly understand audience behavior and prepare for back-to-school campaigns that feel timely, meaningful, and impactful.
The Audiences Defining Back-to-School 2025
Back-to-School is powered by four core groups, each with unique mindsets and behaviors:
- Parents: Seek tech and healthy products for their children, along with solutions to enhance family comfort and well-being.
- Grade School Students: Interested in technology, video games, fashion, and sports, looking for ways to express themselves and have fun.
- University Students: Prioritize tech for productivity, comfortable fashion, and focus on mental health and well-being.
- Education Leaders: Seek educational tools to improve teaching and solutions for managing workload and well-being.
This audience segmentation reveals that 52% of parents are influenced by online promotions and 45% of university students engage with seasonal offers.
Key Insight: Each group interacts with content differently, and these numbers highlight just how active and responsive Back-to-School audiences are when it comes to digital engagement.
Why This Back to School Trends Matters for Brands:
Campaigns that are personalized will perform best. A neuro-contextual approach allows advertisers to target based on real interests, emotions, and intent—rather than assumptions.
What Content Really Matters This Season?
Seedtag’s analysis of back-to-school engagement reveals four major content clusters dominating attention. Each cluster signals a space where advertisers can activate with impact.
Healthy Snacks and Nutrition
Parents are prioritizing well-being, making nutrition one of the strongest back-to-school themes.
- Interest peaks around cereals, fruit, oat snacks, dairy alternatives, and wellness drinks.
- Major players: Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Tesco, Aldi, Danone, Innocent, Alpro, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Tropicana.
Why This Matters for Brands
Healthy snacking has become a back-to-school essential. FMCG brands can leverage this momentum with contextual activations that align with family-focused lifestyles.
EdTech and Devices
Tech and learning go hand in hand, with students and parents seeking devices that enhance productivity and entertainment.
- Hot topics include laptops, smartphones, headphones, and gaming consoles.
- Major players: Microsoft, Google, HP, Lenovo, Logitech, Samsung, Apple.
Why This Matters for Brands
With digital habits firmly established, the Back-to-School moment is prime time for tech brands to position their products as must-haves for both education and leisure.
School Clothing and Footwear
Fashion continues to define identity during Back to School.
- Strong engagement with uniforms, sportswear, sustainable apparel, and footwear.
- Major players: Adidas, Nike, Puma, Primark, Asda, Next, Marks & Spencer.
Why This Back to School Trends Matters for Brands
Students and parents look for comfort, affordability, and style. Brands that highlight cultural relevance and emotional connection will earn stronger loyalty.
Family Cars
Back to School influences mobility decisions, with parents looking for cars that deliver safety, convenience, and sustainability.
- Strong engagement around SUVs, hybrid cars, and electric models.
- Major players: Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, Kia, Ford, Hyundai, Renault, Peugeot.
Why This Matters for Advertisers
Automotive advertisers can tap into the family conversation by linking campaigns to everyday school runs, safe travel, and eco-conscious choices.
From Insight to Connection: The Role of Neuro-Contextual Advertising
The back-to-school season is one of the most competitive moments of the year, with countless brands vying for attention. What cuts through the noise is not louder messaging, but smarter relevance.
Seedtag’s neuro-contextual AI, Liz, does not simply classify articles or surface keywords. It interprets cognitive signals in real time, decoding user interests, intentions, and emotions.
By mirroring the sophistication of human thought, Liz ensures campaigns are delivered in high-quality, privacy-first environments across premium CTV, video, and the open web. Instead of being limited to top-funnel exposure, Liz aligns brand messaging with every stage of the journey, from awareness to consideration to purchase intent.
The result is intelligence that empowers advertisers to scale relevance while respecting user privacy, enabling them to anticipate audience behavior and prepare for back-to-school campaigns that feel timely, meaningful, and impactful.
The Playbook for Back-to-School Success
- Align with healthy habits: Nutrition-driven activations will resonate with families prioritizing well-being.
- Own the EdTech conversation: Position devices and platforms as essential for productivity and lifestyle.
- Blend fashion with culture: From uniforms to sneakers, connect with audiences through identity and expression.
- Drive family relevance: Automotive brands can link mobility, safety, and sustainability to the Back-to-School journey.
From Trends to Action
Back to School 2025 is more than a seasonal spike. It is a cultural touchpoint that reflects shifting priorities around health, technology, identity, and family life.
Brands that align with these conversations and leverage neuro-contextual AI to deliver campaigns in the right moments will go beyond visibility. They will earn relevance at the very moment when audiences are most open to engagement.x
Ready to maximize your back-to-school campaigns? Discover how Seedtag’s can help you deliver impact where it matters most. Get in touch!
At a time when marketing teams are under increasing pressure to justify every dollar spent, the gap between brand marketing and performance marketing is narrowing. What used to be considered two distinct disciplines, upper-funnel storytelling and lower-funnel conversion, are now in constant conversation.
But how can marketers truly unite both approaches to build long-term brand equity without sacrificing short-term returns?
That’s the question at the heart of the latest episode of Seedtag’s AdTech Heroes podcast. Host Dal Singh sits down with Louise Owen, Chief Performance Officer at UM, for a candid discussion about how brand and performance teams can align around a shared goal: delivering results that matter.
From Louise’s unconventional career path in engineering to her experience leading strategies across multiple global markets, the conversation moves seamlessly between frameworks, culture, and measurement.
The takeaway? Full-funnel marketing success doesn’t come from choosing between brand marketing and performance marketing. It comes from understanding how they work together.
“Brands are asked to demonstrate performance… especially for above-the-line channels where measurement takes time.”, Louise Owen, Chief Performance Officer at UM
From Engineering to AdTech: A Global Perspective
Louise’s path into media was far from linear. With a background in civil and industrial engineering, she initially focused on data analysis and optimization. That technical foundation eventually led her into search trading, where she became curious not just about how campaigns were being optimized, but why.
That curiosity fueled a career that took her to GroupM roles in the US, Colombia, Singapore, Australia, and France, before ultimately bringing her to London. The result is a uniquely global perspective on how media strategies evolve across different markets and what holds them together.
“I was always interested in how things fit together,” Louise explains. “Understanding the mechanics of media was only part of the job. I wanted to know what was driving decisions across the full brand and campaign lifecycle.”
Why Now: The Need for a Chief Performance Officer
So why introduce a Chief Performance Officer role at a network known for its branding strength? As Louise puts it, “Brands are asked to demonstrate performance… especially for above-the-line channels where measurement takes time.”
With financial pressures mounting and marketing budgets under scrutiny, CMOs are being asked to show real, measurable impact across every channel. And while branding efforts might deliver over the long term, stakeholders want visibility now. That tension is what her role aims to address, and bridging the gap between strategic vision and operational impact.
Her work focuses on helping brands understand how to mature digitally, regardless of whether they identify as performance-driven or brand-led. That means showing how each part of a media plan contributes to outcomes and how collaboration between teams can sharpen both sides of the funnel.
How Brand Marketing and Performance Marketing Drive Each Other
For Louise, the divide between brand marketing and performance marketing is largely an internal construct. “To consumers, every touchpoint is a brand experience,” she says. Whether it’s a product video, a display ad, or a sponsored post on social media, each moment contributes to perception and engagement.
This shift is forcing teams to rethink silos. Tools like unified planning platforms and shared audience insights are helping brands take a more integrated approach - one where strategy, audience segmentation, and measurement are designed from the ground up to serve both awareness and conversion goals.
She offers a simple example: search. While often viewed as a performance channel, it also serves as a visibility tool. Being discoverable at the right moment reflects how well a brand has established itself. A strong brand presence enhances search results. A clear search signal helps refine brand messaging. The two are inseparable.
This integration is about more than campaign design. It’s also about shifting measurement goals. Rather than segmenting success by tactic, brands are now starting to ask broader questions: Which audiences are engaging? What content is resonating? Where is value being created?
Audience Understanding Comes First
Behind every successful full-funnel campaign is one central factor: knowing your audience.
Louise emphasizes that aligning on target segments (real, reachable, addressable audiences) is what allows brand and performance teams to work in sync.
It starts with the basics: Who are you trying to reach? What are their behaviors, their needs, their intentions? This is where intent-based marketing powered by data plays a crucial role.
Louise points out that brand planners and performance marketers often use different data sets, which can create disconnects in messaging and targeting. Integrating those perspectives allows for smarter segmentation, more relevant messaging, and better outcomes.
Retail media, she notes, is one of the spaces where this convergence is playing out most clearly. By combining emotional engagement with direct access to purchase behaviors, retail environments offer a snapshot of how upper and lower funnel dynamics are colliding in real time.
Local Nuances, Global Lessons
Having worked across five continents, Louise has a deep appreciation for local nuance. In countries like Australia, for example, centralized infrastructure and detailed consumer research enable advanced cross-channel campaigns. In contrast, regions with more complex supply chains or data regulations require more adaptive planning.
She highlights the challenges global brands face when trying to unify their ad tech and martech stacks across regions. What works in the UK may not translate to Poland or India, due to legal constraints, supply chain issues, or market fragmentation.
Yet these differences are also opportunities and are consistently pushing brands to rethink how and where they collect data, how they define success, and how they adapt creative to local needs.
Can Brand and Performance Teams Drive Full-Funnel Success?
The answer, for Louise, is an emphatic yes but only if organizations are willing to shift how they work, not just how they plan.
She shares examples of brands using performance data to improve brand targeting, and vice versa. One case involved a brand with overlapping audiences across multiple products. By examining performance insights, that is how people engaged with different campaigns and moved between products, then the brand was able to reallocate spend, refine messaging, and reduce internal duplication.
Instead of managing campaigns in isolation, they began planning them as part of a shared ecosystem, where performance results could inform brand direction and brand signals could optimize conversion.
It’s this kind of feedback loop that Louise sees as essential to future success. And it’s why she believes that AI, if deployed correctly, could finally unlock better measurement across the board, offering real-time insights that reflect how audiences actually behave, not just how they’re expected to.
Measurement and the Road Ahead
One of Louise’s biggest hopes for the industry is smarter, more customizable measurement. As she notes, legacy approaches like marketing mix models often struggle to keep up with fast-changing digital behavior. She believes AI will play a major role in evolving these systems while helping brands understand which channels actually drive growth, and why.
She’s also candid about the role that data infrastructure plays. Too often, companies are held back by fragmented systems and years of unstructured information. If she could go back in time and give brands one piece of advice, it would be to unify their data from the beginning.
“Unification of data and signals is really what powers insights,” she says. “You need a clean dataset to build scenarios and make good decisions.”
What It Means for Marketers Today
Ultimately, Louise’s insights point to a simple but often overlooked truth: real marketing impact comes from alignment. When brand marketing vs performance marketing is seen as a choice, teams work in opposition. But when they’re aligned, from segmentation to creative to measurement, the result is smarter campaigns, more relevant experiences, and stronger business outcomes.
The challenge now is less about building new capabilities and more about connecting existing ones. For marketers, that means investing in shared tools, fostering cross-team collaboration, and reframing measurement in terms of real-world results.
Brand marketing vs performance marketing isn’t a debate. It’s a relationship. And as Louise makes clear in this conversation, the most successful brands are the ones that treat it that way.
Listen to the Full Episode
Want to dive deeper into this conversation? Listen to Louise Owen on AdTech Heroes: When Branding Meets Performance: Insights from Kinesso and hear how brands can unite storytelling and strategy for full-funnel success.
Passions Over Profiles: How AI Sees the Real Me… and My Bees
On paper, I’m the definition of a demographic stereotype: a suburban white male in his late 40s who likes sports and wood-fired cooking. Statistically, I fit the mold—over 80% of U.S. men consider themselves sports fans, and surveys show grilling is still seen as a male-dominated activity.
But numbers only tell a fraction of my story. Beyond the smoker and team sports, I’m passionate about health, fitness, and well-being. I love creating meals from fresh, organic ingredients sourced directly from farms. Cycling is central to my lifestyle, taking me across New York State in search of the best trails and vegetable stands. That love for the outdoors and healthy eating led me to gardening, and eventually, to beekeeping—an uncommon pursuit for someone with my demographic profile.
Beekeeping isn’t just a hobby; it’s a reflection of my values: sustainability, environmental stewardship, and a handcrafted connection to nature. It’s proof that broad labels like “sports” or “barbecue” can branch into highly specific, deeply personal passions—unique combinations of interests, behaviors, and values that no demographic snapshot can reveal.
Why Seedtag’s AI Liz Makes the Difference: AI for Advertising
This is where Seedtag’s Neural-Contextual AI, Liz, stands apart. Liz doesn’t pigeonhole me by age or gender. Instead, she understands the full context—maybe I’m browsing cycling routes, then organic cooking guides, then articles about pollinators or sustainable farming. She connects these signals to understand who I truly am, delivering relevance instead of stereotypes.
Traditional demographic targeting would drop me into a “male, 45–54, suburban” box and push sports cars or generic gadgets. Liz’s neuro-contextual targeting sees the chef, the cyclist, and the environmental steward—and serves me organic food products, sustainable gear, boutique travel experiences, and brands that share my values.
So while many people who look like me may be sports fans, that doesn’t define the whole person. Like minded affinities can reveal deeper values—care for artisanal craftsmanship, our environment and experiences. Seedtag’s AI Liz bridges these unique interests, replacing broad demographic assumptions with rich, colorfully informed context.
When brands connect with me through my passions, they’re not just serving ads; they’re starting conversations that feel relevant, personal, and worth engaging with. That’s the power of advertising in context: it speaks to who I am, not just what I look like on paper.
Earlier this year, we introduced Neuro-Contextual Advertising, Seedtag’s new evolution in marketing innovation that combines neuroscience principles with Agentic AI to interpret interest, emotion, and intent in real time. This represents a decisive evolution from traditional contextual targeting, moving beyond reading pages to truly understanding people and what drives them.
At the heart of this transformation is Liz, our proprietary, fully in-house Neuro-Contextual AI. Liz mirrors the sophistication of human thought by interpreting cognitive signals in real time and delivering high-quality, privacy-first, full-funnel advertising across premium CTV, video, and the open web. Building on this neuro-contextual understanding, Seedtag utilizes the Liz Agent, powered by the latest advancements in Agentic AI, to autonomously activate Liz’s intelligence through an intuitive, conversational interface. Because Liz is developed entirely in-house, we have full control over its evolution, ensuring our technology stays ahead in the privacy-first era without relying on third-party tracking or personal data.
Now, this vision is being recognized on a global stage. eMarketer’s “Tech Trends H1 2025” report has named Neuro-Contextual Advertising as the number one trend at the intersection of AI and neuroscience, and placed Seedtag at the forefront of this transformation. For us, this is more than industry recognition, it is validation of a shift we have been driving for years, and a signpost for where digital advertising is headed next.
Why This Recognition Matters
As eMarketer states in its Tech Trends H1 2025 report, “AI-powered neuro-contextual advertising is revolutionizing how brands target consumers. Companies like Seedtag are combining neuroscience research with real-time emotional state detection.”
eMarketer’s recognition of neuro-contextual advertising as the top trend highlights its growing importance for brands, agencies, and publishers navigating the evolving advertising landscape. The future of advertising lies not in static keywords or third-party data, but in understanding the human psyche in a privacy-first way.
The report emphasizes several key differentiators of Seedtag’s approach:
- Real-time emotional intelligence: analyzing context and viewing patterns to detect emotional states as they happen.
- Dynamic creative alignment: adjusting ad tone from upbeat creative during high-energy moments to more subdued messaging in reflective contexts.
- Privacy-first delivery: achieving precision targeting without cookies or user tracking, aligning with the expectations of a privacy-first era.
From Marketing Innovation to Impact
When we launched Neuro-Contextual advertising, we set out to answer a critical need. We wanted to deliver advertising that feels timely, resonates emotionally, and drives measurable outcomes while respecting privacy.
Our approach is built on three cognitive pillars:
- Interest: Liz connects real-time content signals to broader user interests, helping brands reach people based on what truly matters to them.
- Emotion: Liz detects the emotional tone of content to deliver ads that align with how users feel, creating deeper and more human connections.
- Intent: By analyzing context, Liz anticipates the goal a person has in mind when engaging with content, whether they are browsing, researching, or ready to convert.
Liz is both the intelligence that extracts audience insights on interest, intent, and emotion, and the AI Agent that activates those insights to create, customize, and optimize campaigns in real time. This integration ensures campaigns are continuously optimized, and remain relevant at every stage of the funnel.
A Turning Point for the Industry
In a crowded adtech landscape, external validation from a respected source like eMarketer matters. It signals that neuro-contextual is not a niche experiment; it is a defining trend shaping the future of advertising.
As the report notes, “Companies like Seedtag are pioneering technology that understands viewer mindset… Using neuroscience-trained AI, Seedtag’s platform intuits interests, emotions, and purchase intent by analyzing context and viewing patterns.”
Advertising has always aimed to connect brands with their audiences in the right place and at the right time. Historically, digital advertising intelligence relied heavily on methods like keyword matching, URL targeting, and basic content categorization. While these tools had their place, they offered only a surface-level understanding of audience context.
Traditional contextual targeting could tell you that a user was reading an article about electric cars, but not whether the article was a glowing review or a critical takedown — or whether the reader was simply curious, seriously considering a purchase, or already decided against it. As privacy regulations tightened and consumer expectations grew, this gap became a critical weakness.
Neuro-contextual advertising closes that gap. By combining neuroscience principles with advanced AI, it moves from simply identifying “what” content is about to understanding “why” a person is engaging with it, and “how” they are likely to feel and act next.
For brands and agencies, this means
- Access to full-funnel outcomes across premium CTV, video, and open web.
- Audience intelligence that is dynamic, scalable, and privacy-first.
- A competitive advantage in engaging consumers in moments that matter most.
Looking Ahead Marketing Innovation
Recognition from eMarketer is just the beginning. We are continuing to refine Liz’s capabilities, expand the functionality of the Liz Agent, and explore partnerships in neuroscience to advance the scientific expertise at the core of our approach.
Our mission remains the same: to help brands win their audiences by tapping into their interests, emotions, and intentions, and to do so in a way that is respectful, relevant, and results-driven.
The future of advertising is not just about being seen; it is about being understood. And with neuro-contextual advertising at the forefront, that future is already here.
Source: eMarketer, Tech Trends H1 2025.
Discover how Seedtag’s Neuro-Contextual Advertising can help your brand win audiences through their interests, emotions, and intentions. Learn more about this marketing innovation trend here.
Amid accelerating deployment of programmatic technology in TV, the openRTB Content Object has become an essential ingredient for buying and selling television media in real-time.
As the television and programmatic advertising ecosystems converge, several interesting applications and technical specifications are playing a more prominent role in how TV ads are bought and sold.
Innovative addressable TV specs are unlocking 1:1 advertising opportunities across broadcast television inventory. Competitive separation and deduplication rules, which have long been table stakes for highly-curated commercial breaks, are becoming commonplace for dynamically-constructed ad pods. And traditional creative review processes, once a tedious (yet necessary) task for programmers, are being automated at scale — just to name a few examples.
While many of these evolving solutions are playing a pivotal role in the convergent TV arena, one critical, but often-overlooked, specification is the Content Object. Part of the IAB Tech Lab’s openRTB protocol, the Content Object helps bring powerful contextual data to programmatic marketplaces, enabling media sellers and buyers to seamlessly transact in real time off key information that historically has been used to inform direct TV buys.
As the leading convergent TV advertising platform, we often find ourselves speaking with media sellers and buyers about the opportunities surrounding the Content Object, and how it can best be deployed. Below, we’ve answered some of the most common questions we hear, hoping to shed some more light on why the Content Object is so key for programmatic TV:
What is the IAB oRTB Content Object?
The Content Object is one part of the IAB’s openRTB standard, which is a widely-adopted transaction protocol used for the programmatic buying and selling of media (in real-time). The oRTB protocol has a number of different object specifications for both bid requests and responses, including metadata like geography, users, devices, and more.
As a bid request specification, the Content Object is a set of standardized information shared by media sellers that is specific to the actual content or program in which an ad opportunity is available, rather than the app or bundle. Exchanging this type of information enables media sellers and buyers to transact off highly-valuable content metadata, such as a TV show’s name, rating, or genre.
What are the types of metadata included and exchanged via the Content Object?
The Content Object includes a wealth of contextual metadata, spanning 25 available fields in total. The metadata supported by the spec includes information common in episodic television, such as the specific series, show, episode, genre, and rating. Other information like production quality, program language, whether or not the opportunity lives within a livestream, and so forth, is also supported via the Content Object — a full version of which can be found in section 3.2.16, here.
How are programmatic media sellers and buyers using the Content Object, and what are the associated benefits?
Media sellers use the Content Object to automatically provide prospective media buyers with valuable information on the context or program in which their ad may appear (again, as part of the bid request). This is critical within programmatic marketplaces specifically, as advertisers are increasingly seeking more flexibility and transparency into their campaigns from both a content targeting and ad delivery perspective.
By transacting off the Content Object, media sellers earn premiums for their inventory by making it more transparent and enticing for buyers, which helps to drive up demand density (e.g. the number of brands bidding on their inventory). Media buyers meanwhile benefit from greater contextual targeting insights for premium TV programming, ensuring brand safety against key client criteria while allowing for more relevant and impactful advertising on the big screen.
More broadly, why is the oRTB Content Object so important as programmatic and TV converge?
As programmatic technology and oRTB protocols are increasingly deployed in both connected and traditional television, it becomes critical that consistent parameters and taxonomies are established to inform the buying and selling of TV media.
Historically, episodic TV inventory has been sold directly against a combination of audience ratings and show-level information. Ensuring the latter of these two (valuable content data) is exchanged consistently between media sellers and buyers in an automated fashion via programmatic is critical to helping all parties accomplish key objectives, from either a yield optimization or an advertising impact standpoint.
This is all the more important as privacy regulations evolve and as viewing behaviors proliferate across cable, broadcast, and connected TV. Establishing platform-agnostic and privacy-conscious transaction standards, such as via the Content Object, is key for building both a sustainable advertising ecosystem and interoperability across systems.
What should media sellers and buyers be doing in order to take full advantage of the Content Object?
If you’re a media seller, configure your bid requests to pass all relevant information within the Content Object. This ensures your inventory is made available to all relevant advertisers who are interested in buying against specific shows or genres, which ultimately helps you drive greater demand density and yield.
For media buyers, configure your advertising platform — whether that be a DSP or an internal trading desk — to accept and read the Content Object. This is a crucial first step that will allow you and your end brand clients to unlock highly-valuable contextual metadata for campaign targeting and private marketplace (PMP) curation.
To learn more about the Content Object, and how you can capitalize on all that it enables from a yield or advertising impact standpoint, reach out to us here:
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