Anoki Integrates With Magnite While Seedtag Adds Neuroscience To Find Emotional Connections
The advertising business is increasingly acting as if the “C” in connected TV stands for “contextual.”
Just today:
Magnite said it had integrated Anoki’s ContextIQ into its sell-side platform, giving buyers access to scene-level contextual targeting and planning tools through Magnite SpringServe.
Seedtag announced that it is making available neuro-contextual advertising, using artificial intelligence to see how people’s brains process programming and using information to find moments of high-interest, emotional connection and intent, in order to increase the performance of campaigns across CTV and digital video.
Gracenote issued a report that found that as sports move to streaming, the data about sports programming, such as the league and specific teams involved, was largely not available to advertisers looking to buy targeted ads programmatially.
Contextual advertising has emerged as a potential answer to some of the complaints advertisers and buyers have about connected TV, including consumer privacy, brand safety and transparency about the shows in which their commercials are appearing.
Using AI, contextual data providers analyze content to identify its genre and program type and find moments and scenes with actors, moods and music that would make ad messages resonate with viewers.
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“It's pretty well understood how contextual advertising helped to revolutionize web-based advertising, but it's really been slow to arrive in a meaningful way in CTV,” Abbey Thomas, chief commercial officer at Anoki, told TVREV.
“Now, thanks to new large language models and the power of multi-modal AI we can finally bring that same level of contextual targeting to advertising now in the CTV ecosystem,” Thomas said.
Anoki’s ContextIQ is an AI engine that analyzes scene content, sentiment and brand safety in CTV programming. Magnite is the first supply-side platform to adopt ContextIQ and says it gives buyers using the SpringServe access to scene-level targeting and planning tools.
“At Magnite, we’ve long been focused on building and enabling tools that help our clients optimize across every screen, and this integration with Anoki takes that commitment to the next level,” said Kristen Williams, senior VP, partnerships at Magnite. “By embedding AI-powered scene analysis into our CTV stack, we’re equipping advertisers with smarter, more scalable tools to reach their audiences in the most relevant moments, all while maintaining transparency and control.”
Compelling contextual data is the first step in the process. The second step is making the data actionable within the programmatic technology increasingly used to buy CTV ad inventory.
“It was essential that we would work with a leading ad tech provider like Magnite,” Thomas said. Magnite will have ConnectIQ in its system on an exclusive basis for six months.
Buyers have already been using Anoki’s data and platform through its direct sales team and seeing “incredible” results, she said.
“The integration of ContextIQ within SpringServe allows the industry to reimagine the ad break by opening up a complete picture of scene level analysis across CTV,” Thomas said. “ContextIQ leverages multimodal AI to capture the full emotional, visual, and auditory context of every scene.”
In addition to targeting, ContextIQ lets marketers set up rich brand suitability profiles that go beyond simply saying “no news.” “These are very specific, defining exactly what type of content brands want to show up and do not wanna show up in,” she said.
At the same time it is producing more effective and efficient campaigns for advertisers, contextual data can increase the value of content for programmers.
“This integration allows us to marry the power of A+E’s best-in-class entertainment portfolio with state-of-the-art contextual tech, enriching viewers’ experience with ads far more relevant, resonant, and aligned with the content on screen,” said Roseann Montenes, head of audience innovation & digital at A+E Global Media.
Seedtag says it is taking contextual advertising to a new level. While most contextual data is compiled by scanning text and images. Seedtag said its AI – nicknamed Liz – operates like a human brain to understand how people engage, feel and make decisions.
“This marks a major evolution for the company—and a decisive step beyond the limits of traditional contextual advertising,” said Jorge Poyatos, founder and co-CEO of Seedtag. “We built our reputation applying AI to context, but Liz’s progression into neuro-contextual targeting changes the conversation. Artificial intelligence no longer just recognizes content—it understands interest, intent, and emotion, and drives results across the entire funnel.”
Seedtag says neuroscience shows that familiar context-congruent stimuli are processed more easily and are more likeable, resulting in more attention and receptivity.
Advertisers can access and apply Seedtag’s insights through a Liz Agent, which enables them to ask strategic questions about competitive position, audience resonance and contextual alignment.
“What we’re seeing with neuro-contextual and agentic AI is a step change,” said Albert Nieto, Seedtag founder and co-CEO. “Contextual advertising taught us that it was possible to drive results without identifiers—and that remains core to our value. But the category never fully reflected what we were building. Most people still think of contextual as keyword targeting. That’s miles away from what Liz is doing today. This launch shows how far we’ve come—and how much more our technology can enable.”
The Gracenote report found that while contextual data is making advertisers more confident while buying CTV, some of the information they want is still lacking.
“Contextual advertising is regaining the spotlight as marketers seek privacy-focused strategies to engage with consumers across digital media channels. This is particularly the case across connected television, which is becoming the dominant way that audiences engage with their TVs,” the report found.
But it also noted that basic metadata about programs, including genre, year of production, mood and parental ratings aren’t available when programmatic buying and selling decisions are being made.
Metadata on sports is particularly lacking at a time when more games are being streamed, and more buys are being made programmatically.
One ad agency recently showed Gracenote a sampling of sports programming that was available. Of the 28 entries in the sample, only four included league information, and only five specified which teams were playing in the listed programs.
Why does that matter? On March 27, 2025, for example, a tennis match in the Miami Open and a college basketball game in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA March Madness tournament were televised at the same time. Both were live sports competitions, but they’re very different otherwise — but not to programmatic platforms, unless they have data that distinguishes them from one another, the Gracenote report says.
“With more complete and standardized program metadata available in the bidstream, advertisers benefit from contextual signals that enable better understanding of content, inform cross-platform CTV investments and facilitate granular ad targeting,” Gracenote said.
As an example, the May 17 WNBA game between Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky with rival Angel Reese appeared on a large number of traditional and streaming channels.
“Descriptive metadata combined with TV listing information attached to the program in the bidstream differentiated it from the more than 25 other live sports events played at the same time. This opened new opportunities for advertisers seeking to align with WNBA content to programmatically buy inventory within the Fever game and reach key target audiences,” the report said.
“CTV is a strong channel for advertisers today but opportunities exist to make it even better,” said Bill Michels, chief product officer at Gracenote. “We’re pleased to provide new insights to brands seeking to maximize the potential of CTV and have confidence that the channel is effectively delivering on their advertising objectives.”
Executives from Anoki, Magnite and Gracenote will be speaking at TVREV’s “Future of Streamonomics” conference.