Brian Gleason is the Chief Executive Officer of Seedtag, the global leader in neuro-contextual advertising. Appointed in August 2025, he leads the company’s continued expansion across CTV and the open web, steering its mission to redefine digital advertising through Seedtag’s proprietary AI platform, Liz. At Seedtag, Gleason oversees a global team of 700+, leading operations across North America, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC. Under his leadership, Seedtag continues to pioneer privacy-first, AI-driven advertising that interprets interest, emotion, and intent—empowering brands to connect with audiences at the right moment across every screen.

What truly differentiates Seedtag is our commitment to bringing emotion, intelligence, and integrity back to advertising. Neuro-contextual advertising is how we do it—a smarter, more human approach.

A seasoned ad tech executive, Gleason brings decades of experience driving growth and innovation across global media and technology organizations. Before joining Seedtag, he held senior leadership roles at Criteo, including Global Chief Revenue Officer and President of Retail Media, where he helped build the company’s commerce media strategy. Earlier in his career, he held leadership positions within GroupM, overseeing several high-growth businesses.

Brian, you’re stepping into the CEO role at Seedtag following leadership positions at Criteo, GroupM, and Xaxis. What drew you to Seedtag, and how do your previous experiences shape your vision for the company?

I’ve been fortunate to work at some amazing companies that transformed our industry—Xaxis when audience targeting was just emerging, Criteo with the rise of retail media, and now the biggest of them all with Seedtag and the innovation of neuro-contextual AI with Liz. The intersection of technology and media is where I feel most comfortable, and I am extremely humbled by the opportunity to join Seedtag and work with our fantastic team, connecting agencies, brands, and publishers to make advertising welcome and not intrusive.

Seedtag is one of the fastest-growing companies in ad tech, and I love the energy and fast-paced innovation—scale wins in our industry, and it’s our ambition to bring Liz to the world as the contextual operating system for advertising across all media formats. We have all seen companies have a good quarter or a good year. What’s impressive about Seedtag is its ability to scale steadily at such a high level. That consistency is incredibly rare in our business and truly a testament to our innovation and ability to execute.

I’ve always been passionate about commerce media, and it took a lot to pull me away from that space. But Seedtag represents an even bigger opportunity: to redefine how advertising works by making it more human, sustainable, and effective. My experience at Criteo, GroupM, and Xaxis taught me how to scale global businesses, embrace innovation, and lead data-driven transformation. At Seedtag, I see the chance to bring all of that together to accelerate growth and shape the future of privacy-first advertising.

What excites you most about Seedtag’s mission, and what do you see as the company’s core differentiators in the ad tech space today?

For Seedtag, AI has never been a buzzword—it’s been the foundation of everything we’ve built since day one. With over a decade of refinement, we’re not just leveraging contextual advertising; we’re pioneering its evolution every day. What excites me most is how our technology goes beyond traditional contextual awareness campaigns: by understanding users’ interests, intentions, and emotions in real time, we deliver meaningful impact across the full funnel—from awareness to action. What truly differentiates Seedtag is our commitment to bringing emotion, intelligence, and integrity back to advertising. Neuro-contextual advertising is how we do it—a smarter, more human approach.

Seedtag is pioneering neuro-contextual advertising powered by Agentic AI. Can you explain what neuro-contextual means, and how it changes the way advertisers reach audiences?

Neuro-contextual advertising goes far beyond traditional contextual methods like keyword matching, URL analysis, or predefined categories. By combining neuroscience principles with advanced embeddings, our neuro-contextual AI, Liz, is able to understand content in a human-like way.

Liz can understand everything on a page or screen—text, images, video, even emotional cues—while always respecting user privacy. She has a native comprehension of ten languages and processes millions of articles daily to determine not just what content is about, but why it sparks certain interests, intentions, and emotions in users. She also powers AURA by Liz, our premium creative suite designed to give brands insights, recommendations, and optimisation for their ads—powered by creative intelligence and generative AI. In this way, Liz connects the right audience with the right ad at the moment of highest impact.

What’s new with Agentic AI is the Liz Agent: a conversational interface that lets brands and advertisers directly query Liz—asking about competitive positioning, audience resonance, or contextual alignment. It makes accessing her full capabilities seamless, helping clients activate campaigns with more intelligence, speed, and precision.

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Seedtag recently reported 120% YoY growth in North America and successful expansion into new markets like Australia and Canada. What’s driving this momentum, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for future growth?

Our momentum comes from two things: first, the strength of our technology, and second, the trust we’ve built with brands and agencies. In North America especially, we’re continuing to scale rapidly—expanding our footprint with publishers and deepening relationships with advertisers.

Looking ahead, one of the biggest opportunities is in CTV. While it’s a fast-growing category, contextual in CTV is still an evolving space, and we see huge potential to bring our unique capabilities there.

Another key driver will be our agency partnerships and making the power of Liz more accessible to them. Having spent a decade at WPP, I know how critical it is to integrate seamlessly into the planning systems of groups like Publicis, Omnicom, and others. By doing so, we can accelerate adoption and deliver even more value across all our markets.

How does Seedtag’s approach to privacy-first, context-based advertising address industry concerns around data privacy and the decline of third-party cookies?

Privacy is built into every part of our offering. By focusing on the interests, intentions, and emotions of users, rather than their personal data, we help advertisers succeed in a privacy-first world without compromising performance. Most recently, we strengthened our global partnership with Human Security, reinforcing our long-standing commitment to providing authenticated, fraud-free inventory across CTV and the open web.

CTV is a big focus for Seedtag, especially following the integration with Beachfront. What makes Seedtag’s CTV offering unique, and what trends are you seeing in this space?

What makes our CTV offering unique is that we’re bringing the same depth of contextual intelligence that Seedtag has built on the open web into the streaming environment. Our AI, Liz, doesn’t just rely on the IAB taxonomy—she analyzes content using natural language processing, computer vision, and sentiment analysis, breaking it down into over 11,000+ categories. That same capability now applies to video, where Liz can recognize 600+ objects and 300 situational contexts.

In addition, Liz’s emotion model works at both the show and scene levels, using comprehensive metadata to detect key moments, themes, and the predominant emotions in each piece of content. This enables ads to be matched to content more precisely and meaningfully.

Seedtag’s AI Intention Models aim to distinguish between casual browsing and transactional readiness. How does this capability impact campaign performance for your clients?

Our AI Intention Models allow us to distinguish between casual browsing and purchase-driven content. This means brands can avoid wasting spending on low-intent impressions and focus investment where consumers are most likely to act. For example, a leading automotive client in Spain achieved a Cost per Quality Visit 68% below target and a Cost per Lead 35% below the goal, showcasing how intention-based targeting directly translates into stronger campaign performance.

As marketers shift from demographic targeting to intent and interest-based strategies, what advice do you have for brands looking to make this transition successfully?

The promise of personalization has faced challenges as micro-targeting adds significant cost and lacks scale. But the value is still clear—the ability to customize messaging and creative to your most valued customers. Contextual advertising is the unlock—it offers massive scale and tremendous value while delivering messages that are welcome rather than intrusive. That’s what our industry has always wanted. Now we can deliver across the digital universe where people spend the most time.

How do you foster innovation and maintain Seedtag’s company culture as the organization grows so rapidly and expands into new regions?

You always need to remember where you came from and what made you successful. Seedtag was born in Madrid, and that will always be the heartbeat of the company. We move with speed and innovation, with scale at the core of what we do. The most important thing is that everyone understands where we are going and the problems we are trying to solve. Give people direction and the space to execute, and amazing things happen.

As we expand, you need consistency across markets, but also the ability to tweak for local needs. We have amazing talent in our industry, and everyone wants to be a part of companies that are growing so quickly, making it critical that we continue bringing in Seedtaggers who understand our values and want to be a part of something special.

Looking ahead, what are your top strategic priorities for Seedtag in the next 12–18 months?

Looking ahead to the next 12–18 months, our top priority is continuing to scale while advancing privacy-first advertising through neuro-contextual strategies powered by Liz. We’re focused on helping brands better understand and connect with consumers by translating emotions and context into measurable outcomes. This means continuing to refine our AI models, expanding adoption across key markets, and advancing our offering within the CTV space. At Seedtag, our mission remains clear: putting our clients at the center while bringing emotion, intelligence, and integrity back to advertising

Finally, what inspires you as a leader, and what advice would you share with other executives navigating rapid change and innovation in the digital advertising industry?

To succeed in this fast-evolving industry, the right team is critical. You need to have a deep understanding of the client’s needs and the team to solve those problems at an incredible pace and efficiency. You also need the ability to commit, but at the same time, because our industry moves so quickly, you can’t be afraid to pivot when necessary. And finally, you have to love what you do—and who you do it with—each and every day. Teams win, egos don’t.

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