Seedtag applies advanced AI to deliver privacy-first advertising at scale. As the creator of neuro-contextual advertising, Seedtag moves beyond traditional contextual targeting methods such as keywords and categories. Instead, Seedtag understands deeper signals of interest, intent, and emotion to create custom audiences based on a brand’s objectives.

Marcus Johnson (00:00):

Ever seen an ad that just fits perfectly? That's Seedtag, S-E-E-D-T-A-G. Their neuro-contextual technology combines AI and neuroscience principles to place brands exactly where they belong. It's privacy-first advertising that taps into the user's interest, emotions and intentions, making every interaction feel natural and relevant. Seedtag, where context becomes intelligence.

(00:29):

Hey gang, it's Friday, February 13th. Jeremy, Brian, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast, made possible by Seedtag. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation, we have two folks. We're joined by our very own senior director of content living in New York. It's Jeremy Goldman.

Jeremy Goldman (00:44):

Hey, Marcus, happy Friday.

Marcus Johnson (00:45):

Hello, sir. Same to you and special guest today. No, offense, Jeremy, the CEO of Seedtag living in Connecticut, Brian Gleason, welcome to the show.

Brian Gleason (00:55):

Thanks, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (00:56):

Good to see you both, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Anytime we have a special guest on again, sorry Jeremy, we start with a speed intro. So two questions, one for Jeremy, two for Brian. Brian, I'll start with you. What do you do in a sentence?

Brian Gleason (01:12):

I lead Seedtag, we're the pioneers of Liz, which is a neuro-contextual AI. In short, it helps us analyze moments that are emotionally connected, that are contextually relevant and that drives more relevance, more performance for brands in a privacy compliant way.

Marcus Johnson (01:32):

Very nice. Curveball question, what are your top three favorite things about a foreign country you love? We've spoken before and you were telling me that you travel a lot for work, a few places you spend more time in than others. So I wanted you to pick one of those places and tell me a couple of reasons why it's your favorite.

Brian Gleason (01:50):

Cool. I'll give you that one. Yeah, it's a great question. I spend 120 days a year traveling. So when I'm in a new city, the biggest thing is I love to walk around to get on a walk either in the beginning of the day, end of the day, not get in the car because you actually see the city. Second thing for me is I love to try new foods. Having traveled the world and trying to... You always try. It's not always the place that's most recognized. It's that little hole in the wall that's Fun to get to. I love that. And the last one is I love to bring my family along. So if I could bring my wife or my kids to be able to experience it with others, those are the things.

Marcus Johnson (02:26):

Very nice. Spending quite a bit of time in Spain, you were saying, do you have a favorite food that you always go back to when you're there?

Brian Gleason (02:33):

It's funny, the first time I was in Spain, I ate the croquetas and the jamon for literally, I think my first four visits.

Marcus Johnson (02:42):

There you go.

Brian Gleason (02:42):

I've expanded beyond that and there's not one thing except when I'm in Paris, the baguette with cheese and the salted butter, I am locked in.

Marcus Johnson (02:57):

It's a perfect answer. Little brie on the side, come on.

Brian Gleason (03:00):

A little brie on the side and a glass of wine depending on the time of day.

Marcus Johnson (03:04):

What are we doing? That's the perfect answer. Jeremy, good luck topping that, my friends. What do you have for us? What's a favorite place of yours and reasons why?

Jeremy Goldman (03:13):

Portugal just because I've been there like eight times, so I know it pretty well at this point. And I mean, I would say it really is the walking around. It really is the eating. The one place where I differ from Brian is it really is for me the leaving the-

Marcus Johnson (03:27):

Keep the family out.

Jeremy Goldman (03:27):

... leaving the family at home because it's like, I don't know about Brian, but I sleep so much better on the road. Just not having somebody walk into your room in the middle of the night and shake you and ask you to give them a hug and tuck them back in. Doesn't happen to me in Vegas. Doesn't happen to me in Lisbon.

Brian Gleason (03:46):

There you go.

Marcus Johnson (03:47):

Sorry, Jeremy's family. My apologies. They're probably like, "Yeah, we agree." Anyway, today's real topic is what the data says about attention, context and modern advertising.

(03:58):

All right gents, we are talking a lot about attention. What does that mean? So we're going to start there. Brian, how does Seedtag think about the word attention?

Brian Gleason (04:16):

It's funny attention, it's not exactly what we do, but it's at the core of one of the things we do. So attention's like, did you capture someone? Did someone stop and take note of whatever's going on, the conversation? And when you look at our world today, there's so much noise. There's so much noise, we're constantly getting more and more. And attention is for me it's that moment and it's really are you receptive to a new message, to a new thing, to an idea, to our concept. Did you get my attention? Meaning, did you stop me from doing anything else I was doing to take note of what's going on in that moment?

Marcus Johnson (04:58):

Yeah, and to really process the information, I think.

Brian Gleason (05:00):

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (05:02):

A lot of time people say, "Oh, you have a good memory," not to me, but to other people. What they mean by that, I think anytime I've been able to remember something is because I've not just seen the thing, but I've processed the thing. I think there's a big difference between clicking on a thing and really paying attention. Really focusing on something is different between that and having a real conversation with someone and really giving them some focused attention. Jeremy, what does it mean to you?

Jeremy Goldman (05:26):

I mean, for me it means that this is what clients are really trying to get their heads around. There's been years and years of like, hey, we're just going to get you a whole bunch of impressions and to try to assume that every single impression is created equal when we all know that that is not the case, that is not true. So if that's not true, then why don't we get a little bit deeper? And that's why there have been a number of companies that have tried to get to the heart of what is an attention metric so we can really understand to your point, Marcus, about what was processed. Because if not all impressions are created equal, why do I want to pay for them on a per thousand basis? I want to pay for them based off of what I'm getting in return as an advertiser. And to not assume that they're all equal, because again, they are not.

Marcus Johnson (06:15):

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gleason (06:16):

That's a key point though, when you think about attention. When we first started doing this, especially in digital, it was okay, was it brand safe? Meaning was it at least seen, right? Was it an environment that I want? Then it was okay, was it in a place on the screen or was it a moment of time where I could gather someone's attention? The things that we're working on, and then we'll talk about it is it goes beyond that which is okay, you've got my attention, what do you do with it? Right? Are you connecting in some unique way? And when I think about neuro-contextual, is there emotional context to that? Is it the right environment? So that's why I said attention's important, but it's not the only thing, it's the foundation in which you can build upon.

Marcus Johnson (07:01):

Yeah. Let's expand on that a bit because attention matters, the context in which you capture someone's attention matters even more or compounded with that. When you talk about neuro-contextual research, something that you've done and how that differs from traditional contextual targeting, what are we talking about there, Brian?

Brian Gleason (07:24):

It's funny. It was so different than any research I've done in the past. So when we did a study and hopefully we'll share it with the audience, but it was really, we partnered with people I'd never even imagined I'd partner with when I started my career 30 years ago. So neuroscience obviously is a full study and we partnered with key institutions to be able to come up and say, okay, how do we even measure this? We've got a thesis or an idea, but how do we measure this? And there was a few different ways. The first way is when you're thinking about engagement, it was looking at cross-brain activity. So there's a way you connect everybody you can imagine up to these nodes and it's able to monitor the brain and say, okay, is there a correlation between how the brain is working and how people engage with content? And we've got different metrics on that.

(08:12):

The second one looks at the, this is a crazy one, it's a frontal lobe alpha asymmetry. If I get that right, it's a gold star for me. And what that starts to look at is the emotional connection. So you can imagine you've got these scientists and they do this every day and they're focusing on advertising, which makes sense now to say, okay, great, how is the brain in terms of both an attention or an engagement and then the emotional context of that, how does that work? And that was the basis of the study, which again, different than anything I've ever done before, which we're typically looking at performance metrics, did someone click on an ad. Now this diving in to say, how does your brain work and how does it react to certain things?

Marcus Johnson (08:59):

Mm-hmm. What did we find? Because I've got a few things here which really jumped out to me, especially the emotional part of it and how that marries with the context and when you're feeling those emotions. But what were a few things that jumped out from the research?

Brian Gleason (09:15):

The biggest thing for me, and I'll give you some stats. So when you looked at that first part, the cross brain correlation, when you looked at that and said, okay, I'm going to show a advertisement that is neuro-contextually relevant, so it's in the right moment, the right time, it matches up. It's how someone's feeling when they're in that environment. We see a 350% increase in recall. So they see it and they recall. It's everything we're trying to get. The next one, and that is versus a non-contextual segment. Versus a contextual segment, I believe it was a 31% recall. So if you're just walking through this, what this means is, okay, great, I'm interested in a topic and I'll say sports, I go to a sports page. That's contextual, it's relevant. If I'm in a sports page, let's say, and the advertisement is nostalgic, if you're getting the through line through, that's the unlock that we're going to get that everybody's trying to do.

(10:13):

And that goes back to everything we try to do as an industry. We've always talked about storytelling when you think about advertising, right? We're trying to tell a story to engage with people. And when we get that right and we've all felt it, you're like, "Oh my God, I felt that. That was a cool ad. I noticed it, it made me think of something and I associated with the brand." That's really what neuro-contextual is. It's trying to say, how do I make sure that I can match the creative with the environment, with the mood or the tonality when somebody's looking at that environment.

Marcus Johnson (10:43):

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Gleason (10:44):

And the payoff's massive. We found when you're looking at the frontal, the alpha asymmetry, that was interesting because there you're starting to get to things like trust, right? You're looking at things like admiration, nostalgia, and when you get to hit those core emotions again, massive uplift in terms of what we've seen. I think it's like a 30% higher retention rate when you connect the dots on that as well.

Marcus Johnson (11:16):

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Some of the things that jumped out to me from the piece. One, you had this line about this psychologist, a Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman is how you pronounce his name, saying, "We rely on fast thinking for our brain's emotional, automatic, and unconscious responses. When a message feels familiar, it's processed effortlessly." And I love that visual of processing something very easy like, brie on a baguette in Paris. And then this other line you have here as well talking about, "Emotion doesn't just relate to the creative, but where the creative appears. When the environment supports the feeling the creative is designed to evoke, the message lands more naturally." Jeremy, what are you thinking here when it comes to neuro-contextual and how that differs from what people have traditionally thought of contextual and how this takes it many levels further?

Jeremy Goldman (12:08):

Well, first off, I'm not as smart as Brian or the people that you partnered with on this study, but I will say that the way I think of neuro-contextual is kind of contextual on steroids. It's going one step further to really understand the customer at a deeper level and where they're at in the moment where they're seeing that ad. And just really getting deeper and trying to connect with people and serve them is valuable because you want to make sure that your money is well spent.

(12:35):

I would be remiss... Did you know this is a pretty big sporting week? There is the Olympics, which I know we're all watching. There was that game. I'm not the biggest football fan, I'll out myself, but the Super Bowl is pretty great from an advertising standpoint to be able to watch and to see how much people spend on the production and the media of these major, major things that everybody's going to see. So it's very hard to be contextually relevant, but yet you have to look at cues like humor and storytelling like Brian was saying, in order to connect with people. And again, in the future, we're going to be trying to connect with everybody at a one-to-one hyper-personalized level and we can go a whole lot further than the Super Bowl where you have to develop a 30-second spot to appeal to as many people as possible. The future is really going to be a lot more one-to-one. And that's why I feel like neuro-contextual is going to be more valuable to people as time goes on.

Marcus Johnson (13:39):

You call it contextual advertising with a heart, I think is what you said to me, Brian, during our call ahead of time. And then in the piece you say it's making advertising feel human again, which seems like it should be obvious but really isn't. And then what, you also told me something before, which I really like this idea of it, a lot of advertising at the moment is about surveillance. You're trying to make it feel more welcoming. Elaborate on that a bit for us if you could.

Brian Gleason (14:02):

Yeah, again, if you look at how we've built our advertising ecosystem over the last 15 years, we've made some mistakes with it. We had this new tool, it was the cookie. The cookie was so amazing for us because suddenly we could see what people did or what they bought. As marketers, it gave us valuable insight. But the challenge with that tool is we overused it. We chased everybody all over the web and it got to the point where you're like, stop. Right? I already bought that a month ago, I don't want to see it anymore. But we were enamored, we were hooked on this thing and it took governments and regulation to come in and say, "Hey, listen, people don't want this anymore. They don't want to be tracked in this way." But we had to change the way that we operate now, which is different because when we were chasing people, we didn't necessarily care how they felt.

(14:45):

We just cared that we found them, right? Like, hey, I got you. It was like someone coming running up to you, shouting at you like, "Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm in a movie theater, right? I'm not paying to take this noise on right now." But that's the way it was built. So if you look at neuro-contextual and contextual, what it says is, "Hey, listen, there's a better way to do this." We're all interested in certain topics that we care about, and when we find those topics and we get something that speaks to us in a unique way and the right tone, it makes the ability for everything to come to life in a way that we want because it's like a conversation. You know what it is? If you're going to have a conversation one-to-one with someone, different than you have a conversation in a large crowd.

(15:25):

And the tool that we're trying to build is to allow agencies the ability to have this emotional intelligence when they're doing their planning, then they could use behavioral on top of that if they choose to. And for brands, it's amazing because for them, brand recall is one of the biggest challenges that they have. If you're just focused on performance, how do you make sure that someone actually recognizes your brand when you're not there? That's the whole art of creativity. And if you look at all the money around the agencies in terms of creativity, they're trying to make sure that when you see a Coca-Cola, you're thinking of the bears or whatever it is, those polar bears around Christmas.

(16:04):

And this technology and this AI, what it allows us to do is basically structure all the content of the open web and CTV so it's structured in a way that makes sense, but then add the emotional connectivity to it in a way that can unlock the value. So it's exciting in terms of the storytelling capability, but the tool didn't exist before, so I can't blame people for saying, here's how we built it. It's the new era and I think the way that we'll plan modern media in the future.

Marcus Johnson (16:34):

Yeah. I want to talk a bit about the media planning part of this, but just to touch on something you just said, hunting people across the web. Reminds me of this bullet that you have in the research. It says, "Neuro-contextual signals allow advertisers to reach high interest moments without cookies or identifiers addressing growing privacy pressure whilst improving effectiveness." Before we get to the plant media planning part of this, was there something from this research that you didn't find out that if you could do another study to follow on from this, what was something that you would look at next?

Brian Gleason (17:15):

I think it proved a few points. So shout out to EMARKETER because last year, I think in the beginning of 2025, you guys highlighted contextual advertising and neuro-contextual as a top AI trend that year. And then you just did something today where you're saying, and it makes sense, for the new generation or younger folks, that are using mobile phones all the time. So if you think about those two things, mobile phones, the challenge there is on a mobile device, what I was surprised by was the trust and the admiration, the emotional connectivity on a mobile device was much higher than a desktop. I wouldn't have expected that because our mobile device we're walking with it, we have, I think of it as more of a, maybe it's because of my age, as a tool in which to do my job and other things. I'm not thinking of it as a emotional connection, but for so many others it is. So I understand the device type is also important. That popped for me a little bit that I wasn't even thinking about it.

Marcus Johnson (18:14):

If someone said, you give up your smartphone or your firstborn, I think there'd be quite a few people who would, especially Jeremy apparently is quite happy to-

Brian Gleason (18:21):

Exactly.

Jeremy Goldman (18:21):

Well, I don't know about firstborn, but if they let you pick which kid, I think that that would be different. But seriously, Brian, I would just add to what you're saying. I think that from the advertisers that I speak to, from a media planning perspective, everybody is getting more and more sophisticated and they're trying to figure out what is the leg up that I have on my competitors that I'm buying media against. I want to put more of my ads towards programmatic so that I can shift spend in a more agile fashion. And going a little bit deeper, having a better understanding of contextual, that's one of those things that I've felt gives a little bit of a leg up because it's not just throwing money on a channel by channel basis. It's really trying to understand things on a deeper level, which again, I think neuro-contextual goes a little bit deeper.

(19:12):

I'm just curious, do you feel that the average buyer gets it more when you're explaining to people about your value proposition? At least in my conversations, I feel like people do understand that there is more than just the cookie in the last year or two than let's say a few years prior.

Brian Gleason (19:30):

You're spot on, Jeremy. I think there's a few parts to that, right? So when you look at traditional behavioral targeting or ID based targeting, there's no question there's value to that, but it's very hard to differentiate because there's one person. So if I know you, then my competitors know you and we're all trying to get to you. So it's very difficult to figure out how with a typical behavioral targeting, you would stand out. With contextual, I think people have always understood the value of contextual, but I think for a long time it was just a tool to structure URLs, right? Great. I can put a URL in this bucket.

(20:05):

The advancements that AI and embeddings and neuro-contextual AI, I think that was the wake-up call for people to go, whoa, this is really different. This is a different thing. And when they see basically the personalization and how I can work with different content type or surfaces, that's the eye-opening moment where there is that unlock to go, oh my god, if I use this, I could see white space that I haven't seen before. I see connectivity between different personas that I hadn't seen before, so I think that that is getting out there.

(20:37):

Now in terms of building it into that intelligence to make it available for the agencies, that's a journey we're on. So we're connecting to the [inaudible 00:20:46], so they could take these data points and use it as a foundation in terms of how they plan. Where we've got to get better at is the way the week work across the funnel, we can show top of funnel is interest, so that's brand lift. The mid-funnel is emotion, that's brand recall, and then the bottom of the funnel. We have to do a better job of showing how to work people up and down the funnel with the tool that I don't think we've done yet.

Marcus Johnson (21:14):

Yeah.

Brian Gleason (21:14):

But yeah, in terms of an eye-opening moment, I mean, listen, we're fortunate to be a very high growth company. It's never fast enough in terms of how many people we want to see it, but for those who do, I do think there's this obvious connection to say, yeah, I've got this creative that's supposed to do this. Yeah, of course I want to get in that environment, no-brainer. How do I do it?

Marcus Johnson (21:34):

Yeah. Let's end with, you led me quite nice into my last question, which is what Seedtag's kind of focusing on and keeping an eye on them. And by that I mean, I guess it's kind of two parts. So one is what specifically is Seedtag focused on? But zooming out in your space, in your area, what is something that you are paying attention to in terms of how it's being developed? So for example, with the podcast, we're focusing on launching a new show at the moment, but if I zoom out a lot of the focus in podcasts at the moment, how do you pivot from audio into video and what does that look like? How is that different from what you've been doing in the past? What do those two questions mean to you for your world, Brian?

Brian Gleason (22:13):

If I think about what we're trying to do, so at the core of what we have is Liz, that's our neuro-contextual AI. And everything we're thinking about is how do I bring Liz to the world? So for me it's connectivity. So for our publishers, publishers have this amazing content, but they've been chasing clickbait for so long, they're not getting rewarded for the quality editorial. So for them, it's to use the tool to understand how people are engaging with their content in a unique way. And that could go across, whether it's news, whether it's sports, whether it's CTV or open web, it should allow them to better articulate their connection with their readers, right? That would be the hope on that side.

(22:53):

For the agencies, it's really about connecting into the way that they work. Agencies have a difficult job, so you can't just be a feature, you have to be a foundational element or an operating system in which they plan. So how do I make it easy for them to use it and give that tool at the most useful ways that doesn't change how they work, but I think enhances the intelligence in which the way they can work.

Marcus Johnson (23:18):

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gleason (23:18):

And for brands, for them, it's really thinking about, okay, you spent all this money on creativity, you spent all this money on segmentation and personalization, but you can't do it. It's really giving them the ability to understand the value of this to the point that Jeremy made, which was how can they use this to differentiate from their competitors to grow and how do they grow incrementally? It's one core mission, but it's the expansion of that into the appropriate touch point.

Marcus Johnson (23:47):

Mm-hmm. All right, gents, we've been referencing some research that Seedtag put together and it's called Tapping Into the Brain's Design, Neuroscience and AI for Real Human Connection. Link is in the show notes if you want to read the full report. It's about 18 pages. Brilliant read. So thank you guys for putting that together and sharing it with us and for coming on the podcast and talking about it. That's all we've got time for today's episode. A huge thank you to today's guests. Thank you first to Brian.

Brian Gleason (24:14):

Thank you. Appreciate It.

Marcus Johnson (24:16):

Yes, sir. And to Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman (24:17):

Thank you. Great to be with you both.

Marcus Johnson (24:19):

And a huge thank you to the whole production crew and to everyone for listening in to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast made possible by Seedtag. Make sure you subscribe and follow, leave a rating review if you have a moment. We will be back. I'll be back in a week because we've got a long Presidents' Day weekend, so enjoy those. But on the following Wednesday the 18th, Susie will be here with the Reimagining Retail Show, talking all about what the 2025 holidays taught us and what we can learn for the holidays in 2026.