Brian Gleason wants you to know that cookies are dead.
Dead.
Gone.
Buried next to your retargeting pool and that creepy ad that followed you across the internet like a needy ex.
And in their place? A bold, shimmering, emotionally intelligent AI named Liz—Seedtag’s agentic answer to Freud in a hoodie. She doesn’t just scan keywords; she senses vibes, reads the emotional tenor of a moment, and places your ad next to the perfect piece of content when you’re most likely to laugh, cry, or—ideally—buy.
Gleason’s thesis?
That the real money isn’t in knowing what you did last summer, but in understanding what you’re feeling right now.
He says the opportunity in contextual advertising isn’t just bigger than retail media—it’s $350 billion big, with the emotional punch of a Pixar finale.
Sounds glorious, right?
So let’s break it down—because this is adtech, and we’ve all been burned before.
“Contextual is Bigger Than Retail Media” — Is That Real, or Just Competitive Manifesting?
Surprisingly, this one's not total fiction. The global contextual advertising market is booming like it’s 1999 and someone just discovered banner ads again. Forecasts put it over $225 billion this year, and if you're a U.S. executive chasing privacy-safe dollars, the domestic market alone is expected to hit $800 billion by 2034. That’s not a typo. That’s a budget line that makes CFOs perk up and ask what “contextual” even means.
So yes, Gleason’s not just spitballing. Contextual is big. Retail media still owns a lot of the hype and grocery cart data, but when you’re talking about emotional resonance across CTV, open web, and every Buzzfeed listicle in between, the scale checks out.
“We Lost What Advertising Was About: Connection.”
This is the part where Gleason goes full rom-com.
He claims cookies led us astray—made advertising transactional, impersonal, cold. That instead of building relationships, we built stalkerware.
He’s not wrong.
As the privacy walls went up—GDPR, CCPA, and Google's increasingly reluctant commitment to cookie deprecation—the entire industry has been panic-Googling “alternatives to third-party data” like a student who forgot the paper was due at midnight.
What emerged? Context. Emotion. Neuroscience. Because apparently, the way to sell sneakers in 2025 is to place an ad not because you looked at shoes yesterday, but because you’re reading an article about finishing your first marathon, and the AI thinks you’re feeling proud, empowered, and ready to spend.
It's a nice idea. And—backed by neuroscience and real performance data—it’s not just marketing poetry.
Studies show emotional resonance increases brand recall by up to 93%, and ads aligned with context have 23% higher sales impact than their behaviorally-targeted cousins.
So yes, Gleason may be leaning into the mood lighting a little hard, but he’s selling something the data supports.
Enter: Liz. The Friendly AI Who Knows You’re Lonely Before You Do.
This is where things get spicy.
Liz isn’t your standard AI. She’s agentic—meaning she doesn’t just respond, she acts. She senses. She analyzes emotional tone, attention levels, user intent. Then she executes in real time, choosing ad placements with the subtlety of a good bartender who knows when to talk and when to slide you another whiskey.
It’s next-gen contextual. Not just “keyword = sneaker ad.”
It’s: “This article is about reinvention, the emotional tone is nostalgic, attention is high, and this reader is in a purchase-receptive state... insert Nike ad here.”
Is this magic? Or just advanced probabilistic math with a better UX?
Probably both. But again, the concept isn’t far-fetched.
Companies from Google to Meta are flirting with similar tools. And if you’re not investing in AI that gets ahead of intent, you’re likely already behind.
Let’s Talk About the Black Box in the Room.
The problem, of course, is the same one we've always had with AI: explainability.
Gleason swears up and down that Seedtag is committed to transparency. That Liz won’t turn into Skynet with an MBA. That brands will still know why their ad ended up next to that emotionally intense article about divorce and dogs.
But this is adtech. We’ve been promised “transparency” so many times we’re practically blind from the gaslighting.
So here’s the truth: Agentic AI is powerful. It’s necessary. And it’s a potential PR nightmare if you don’t get it right.
Marketers love the outcomes. But if the logic chain behind the outcomes isn’t visible, we’re back to square one—just with fewer cookies and more euphemisms.
The Verdict: Gleason’s Not Wrong. But He’s Not the Only One Saying It, Either.
Everything he’s pitching? It’s real. It’s supported. It’s coming whether we like it or not.
But let’s not pretend Seedtag is the lone visionary in the wilderness. The entire industry is sprinting toward emotionally intelligent, privacy-first contextual targeting like it just saw a charging bull labeled “regulation.”
Gleason’s smart to market hard now. He’s ahead of most, if not all, of the DSP dinosaurs still arguing about reach and frequency while their audience watches TikToks in the other tab.
But to win the war, Seedtag’s going to have to prove Liz isn’t just another black box in designer packaging. The era of “trust us, the AI knows what it's doing” is ending—and fast.
Final Word:
Brian Gleason’s vision is mostly right.
His platform? Promising.
The strategy? Smart, scalable, and finally aligned with what users want and regulators demand.
But the next 18 months will determine whether Liz becomes the Alexa of AdTech, or just another over-hyped machine learning mascot collecting dust next to your old DMP.
And if you’re not at least testing neurocontextual tools right now?
You’re not just behind. You’re still sending cookie ads to people who cleared their cache three years ago.
Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.