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Brian Gleason, the former CRO and president of retail media at Criteo, has transitioned to a new leadership role as CEO of contextual ad platform Seedtag. In an exclusive interview with AdExchanger, Gleason articulated his conviction that contextual advertising represents a "bigger opportunity" than even the burgeoning retail media sector he previously championed. This strategic shift signals a broader industry trend towards re-emphasizing the core principles of advertising: fostering genuine connection with consumers.
Gleason’s perspective is rooted in a critique of the industry’s recent hyper-focus on third-party cookies and granular targeting. He argues that this intense concentration has, in many ways, led marketers to lose sight of advertising’s fundamental purpose: to create meaningful engagement. "We’ve become so hyper-focused on cookies and targeting that we lost what advertising really was about: connection," Gleason stated. He posits that true connection hinges on capturing attention and evoking emotion, nuances that are often missed by traditional cookie-based tracking or simplistic content categorization.
The advent of advanced artificial intelligence, however, is poised to bridge this gap. Gleason highlighted how agentic AI tools can now surface deeper, more profound insights into consumer sentiment and engagement, insights that can be effectively activated by ad tech platforms. Seedtag, he noted, has already made significant strides in this direction. The company’s strategic acquisition of video-focused SSP Beachfront last year was a key move to empower its AI agent, Liz, to target audiences across Connected TV (CTV) and the open web not just based on content, but also on contextual relevance and emotional resonance.
Seedtag’s Ambitious Vision and Market Opportunity
The global advertising market is a complex and dynamic ecosystem, with various sectors vying for marketer attention. Retail media has emerged as a significant growth area in recent years, projected to reach tens of billions of dollars annually. However, Gleason believes the overall contextual advertising market, which he estimates to be between $250 billion and $350 billion, presents an even more substantial opportunity. This valuation underscores the potential for growth and innovation within this space.
"It took a lot to rip me away from commerce media, because I love that space, but this was an even bigger opportunity," Gleason explained, emphasizing the scale of the contextual advertising landscape.
Seedtag, under Gleason’s leadership, is already demonstrating significant global reach and growth. The company operates in 17 markets, connecting with over 16,000 publishers. While its origins are in Madrid, its expansion into the U.S. market just two years ago has yielded impressive results, with a 120% growth rate last year. The EMEA region also shows robust momentum, with over 30% growth recorded in the last quarter. This rapid expansion indicates a strong market demand for Seedtag’s innovative approach.
Strategic Priorities for Growth and Innovation
Gleason outlined three primary strategic priorities for Seedtag under his tenure. The first and most crucial is the introduction and widespread adoption of "neurocontextual targeting." This advanced methodology aims to move beyond traditional keyword and category-based contextual targeting by incorporating an understanding of emotion, attention, and genuine interest. Seedtag’s AI platform, Liz, is central to this initiative, enabling a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to audience connection.
"First is introducing this concept of neurocontextual targeting, which lets you connect around emotion, attention and interest," Gleason said. "Contextual used to just look at keywords and categories, and Seedtag was one of the first to build a solution around that. Now we’ve got our artificial intelligence platform, Liz."
The second priority is the continued scaling of Seedtag’s operations across all its existing markets, with a particular emphasis on accelerating growth in the United States. This expansion is critical for solidifying Seedtag’s position as a global leader in contextual advertising.
The third key priority is to enhance Seedtag’s cross-channel capabilities, particularly within the rapidly expanding CTV landscape. While CTV offers immense potential for reaching engaged audiences, current contextual targeting limitations present a challenge that Seedtag aims to overcome. The company’s acquisition of Beachfront is a testament to this commitment, signaling a strategic investment in building robust CTV solutions.
Evolving Advertising Strategies: A Shift Towards Deeper Engagement
Gleason’s leadership at Seedtag is not expected to bring about a radical overhaul of the company’s direction. Instead, his extensive experience, particularly in areas like retail media and agency relations, is anticipated to accelerate existing growth trajectories. "There won’t be a fundamental change, but with my background, there are areas that we could scale and accelerate," he clarified.
A significant focus will be placed on strengthening relationships with brands. This involves not only expanding the publisher supply chain, especially in CTV, but also deepening integration with agency planning systems. Having spent a decade at WPP and maintaining strong ties with major agency holding groups like Publicis and Omnicom, Gleason is well-positioned to facilitate this integration.
For publishers, Seedtag’s priorities are centered on empowering them to monetize their content more effectively. Gleason’s own career origins in publishing inform this strategy. The core principle is to help publishers understand and leverage the value of their direct relationships with consumers. This involves not just audience-based targeting but also ensuring relevancy by deeply understanding the content itself and the emotional connection it fosters with readers. Liz, the AI agent, will be instrumental in providing publishers with these deeper content insights.
The Future of Programmatic Advertising: AI Agents and Interoperability
The digital advertising industry is at a pivotal moment, with many observers predicting a future where programmatic advertising becomes a sophisticated dialogue between buy-side and sell-side AI agents. Gleason acknowledges this evolving landscape but offers a nuanced perspective. He questions the feasibility of an overly fragmented agent-driven system, suggesting that a more integrated approach might prevail.
"I don’t know if they’re going to be separate agents on both sides. How many different agents can anybody operate?" Gleason pondered. "There’s got to be connectivity between those two worlds, and it’s not easy to bring them together. But there will be a few players that come out on top."
He identified major platforms like Meta and Google as setting distinct pathways for AI-driven advertising. Seedtag’s ambition, however, is to become the connective tissue, providing intelligence that spans both the buy and sell sides of the advertising equation. The challenge, and indeed the exciting opportunity, lies in achieving this connectivity at scale, across multiple channels, to deliver meaningful impact.
Addressing Concerns: Transparency and Trust in AI
The increasing reliance on AI in advertising inevitably raises concerns about "black-box" systems and the accountability of algorithms. Gleason recognized these legitimate anxieties and stressed that transparency, brand safety, and privacy must be the foundational pillars of any AI-driven advertising solution.
"It’s absolutely true. Transparency, brand safety and privacy have to be the basic foundations for anything we do," he affirmed. "Be completely transparent with the inventory and where ads are running, and also in how you show outcomes."
He emphasized that the integration of AI should not be a purely technological endeavor. Educating and involving clients in the process is paramount. This includes demystifying the AI models, explaining their operational mechanisms, and demonstrating how they can be customized to surface the desired emotional connections with audiences.
Seedtag’s Position in a Blurring Marketplace
The lines between Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) and Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) are increasingly blurred, leading to questions about where a company like Seedtag fits within the broader ad tech ecosystem. Gleason clarified that Seedtag is not aiming to become an end-to-end platform in the traditional sense. Instead, it operates an exchange where its inventory is accessible and is committed to making its intelligence widely available through various buying paths.
"No. We have an exchange where our inventory is available, and we’re going to continue to build that out," Gleason stated. "However anybody wants to buy, we want to make our intelligence accessible to that buying path."
While the Liz agent will serve as the primary interface for activation, Seedtag will also provide pathways for advertisers to utilize traditional DSPs to activate campaigns through its exchange. This flexible approach ensures broad accessibility and caters to diverse buying preferences.
Future Collaborations and the Power of Neurocontextual Commerce
The conversation naturally turned to potential collaborations, particularly with retail and commerce media platforms like Criteo, given Gleason’s prior role. He sees a powerful synergy between commerce advertising and neurocontextual targeting.
"If I’m thinking about commerce and neurocontextual, well, emotion is brand recall. Imagine taking an emotional signal, marrying that to a contextual target and purchase intent, and then moving that up and down the funnel," Gleason explained, outlining a vision for a more integrated and emotionally resonant commerce advertising strategy.
He expressed an open willingness to explore such collaborations. "We’d love to have that conversation with everybody, including Criteo," he concluded, signaling a forward-looking approach to partnerships that can drive innovation and deliver enhanced value for advertisers and consumers alike. The strategic integration of emotional intelligence into commerce advertising, fueled by advanced AI and contextual understanding, represents a compelling evolution for the digital marketing landscape.
