LONDON – As the advertising industry grapples with tighter privacy rules and the fading usefulness of identifiable user data, contextual intelligence is emerging as one of the most important tools for reaching audiences, said Marko Johns, U.K. managing director at Seedtag, in an interview with Beet.TV contributor Robert Andrews at the Beet.TV and WPP Media Leadership Summit.
Johns said the sector has entered a period in which accurately identifying, and meaningfully reaching, the right audience is more difficult than ever.
“Finding the right audience and targeting the right audience is becoming harder and harder,” he said, pointing out that traditional identifiers that powered digital advertising for decades are quickly losing viability.
Seedtag, founded 11 years ago, has built its business entirely around contextual analysis, evolving from simple URL parsing to interpreting multiple semantic signals across a page. Johns said the company is now advancing to what it calls neuro-contextual advertising, which incorporates an understanding of a consumer’s emotional state at the moment they encounter an ad.
“We’ve actually taken the next step… to understanding the emotion of the consumer at the time of seeing an ad,” he said.
Seedtag recently worked with Columbia University, using EEG studies to observe how people emotionally respond to content and advertising. This research, he added, opens up new possibilities for brands to engage users at moments when they are most receptive.
With holiday campaigns in full swing as the interview was recorded in December, Johns noted that brands already think deeply about emotional connection in their creative work. Extending that thinking to media strategy, he argued, is the next logical move.
“Why wouldn’t you try to understand the consumer and their reaction to the creative you’ve developed, and find them in the right mindset to take action?”
Three-sided opportunity: Brands, agencies and publishers
Andrews asked how the broader ecosystem of brands, agencies and publishers could collectively benefit from an emotional-context approach. Johns said the industry has long been driven by “performance” metrics that don’t necessarily reflect true outcomes. He believes publishers can gain by understanding the emotional impact of their own content, enabling them to build richer data assets and improve the value of their inventory.
For brands, the benefit lies in aligning creative messaging with users’ emotional readiness. “It’s about finding the right user, in the right mindset, at the right time,” he said.
Agencies, meanwhile, gain a more precise foundation for planning and measurement. Johns highlighted results from Seedtag’s testing: ads aligned to the correct emotional context produced a 3.5 times increase in response and brand recall, and 26% higher neural activity, according to the Columbia University study.
Entering 2026 with privacy front and center
Looking ahead, Johns said advertisers planning for 2026 should make emotional intent and contextual understanding central to their strategy, not only because they improve performance, but because they fit a privacy-first future. Seedtag, he noted, has operated as a cookieless company “from minute one,” giving it a head start in building data partnerships that do not rely on user identifiers.
“We aren’t going to sit there and hold everything to ourselves or be our own walled garden,” Johns said. Instead, Seedtag aims to collaborate more deeply with agencies and brands, sharing insights to improve outcomes across the ecosystem.
You’re watching coverage from Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit with WPP Media, filmed in London, presented by Criteo, Index Exchange, Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
