You know that feeling when you are reading an article about something completely unrelated and suddenly a pair of shoes you looked at two weeks ago appears in the sidebar? That jarring moment where your brain has to shift gears from whatever you were focused on to process this random intrusion? Kartal Goksel, CTO of Seedtag, has spent his career trying to eliminate exactly that kind of cognitive friction from your online experience.
The thing is, our brains are not all that different from the AI models we build and train, Goksel explained on a recent episode of The Winners' Circle podcast. When we are engaged with content, whether that is reading an article or watching a video, anything that falls outside that context creates what he calls cognitive friction. And over time, we have basically learned to ignore anything that does not fit the moment we are in.
Why Your Brain Ignores Most Digital Ads
This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. According to research on contextual advertising, consumers pay nearly four times more attention to ads that are hyper-relevant to the content on screen compared to those that are not. Meanwhile, 79% of consumers report being more comfortable with seeing contextual ads than behavioral ads that follow them around based on their browsing history.
Seedtag has been focused on this problem for over 12 years now, starting in Madrid with in-image advertising before expanding to cover the full spectrum of contextual ad placements. At the core of their innovation is Liz, their neuro-contextual AI, which takes this to a whole new level by detecting interest, emotion, and intent from the content itself.
The Three Layers of Neuro-Contextual Understanding
Goksel broke down how Liz actually works in pretty straightforward terms. The first layer is interest, basically understanding what categories the content aligns with and getting granular about it. The second layer is emotion, predicting the primary and secondary emotions that the content will generate in the person consuming it. And the third layer is intent, understanding whether someone is just browsing casually or actively researching a purchase.
He gave a great example about running shoes. If you are a marathon runner reading an article comparing this year's releases of shoes geared toward long-distance running, that is a very different moment than casually scrolling through sports news. The neuro-contextual AI advertising approach recognizes that distinction and serves ads accordingly.
What makes this particularly powerful is the neuroscience backing it up. Seedtag partnered with Professor Moran Cerf, a leading neuroscientist at Columbia University, to study how the brain actually processes advertisements in different contexts. Their research found that when ads align cognitively with content, people do not just notice them more, they actually process them differently at a neurological level.
The Agentic Future of Advertising
Perhaps the most fascinating part of the conversation was when Goksel talked about where all of this is heading. He believes advertising planning itself is going to become agentic, meaning AI systems will handle the planning, execution, and optimization of campaigns with minimal human intervention.
This is not just about efficiency, though that matters too. The global AI in advertising market is expected to reach $81.6 billion by 2033, growing at 28.4% annually as brands adopt intelligent systems for targeting, automation, and personalization. But the bigger shift is about reducing human error and the friction that comes from multiple systems fighting with each other.
Goksel pointed out something interesting about programmatic advertising. When it first launched, the whole premise was to make advertising less human-dependent. But what actually happened was the opposite. All those sophisticated buying machines, DSPs, and SSPs connected together actually created more dependencies on human-based processes across the ecosystem. Now, with agentic AI, he believes we can finally turn that around.
Trust Is the Real Prize
There is a broader conversation happening here about trust in digital advertising. Over half of U.S. consumers report feeling uncomfortable with ads based on their online activity. That creepy feeling when you talk about something at home and suddenly see an ad for it, that erodes trust fast.
Contextual advertising sidesteps this entirely. As Goksel put it, when he sees something relevant to the content he is actually consuming in that moment, it resonates with him. He has bought things because an ad caught him at the right time with the right context. That is a fundamentally different relationship than the surveillance-based model we have grown accustomed to.
The contextual advertising market is projected to reach $562 billion by 2030, driven in part by privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA that are pushing advertisers toward methods that do not rely on personal data tracking. But it is also driven by something simpler: contextual advertising just works better because it respects how our brains actually function.
What Brand Marketers Should Do Next
For brand marketers still running primarily audience-targeted campaigns, Goksel had some direct advice. The science supports contextual approaches. The next generation of consumers is actively put off by identity-based targeting where they feel like somebody is watching them. And for the growing swath of devices where cookies or identities are not available, you are simply not reaching your target audience at all.
His recommendation was to talk with agencies about either combining tactics or gravitating more toward contextual spending. After over a decade of data, he said, it consistently works better than the alternative.
The vision Goksel painted is one where advertising actually adds value to your content consumption rather than interrupting it. Where the open web stays free because publishers can monetize effectively without alienating their audiences. And where your kids can grow up with access to the same wealth of information we have, supported by an advertising model that respects their attention.
Those shoes might finally stop following you around the internet. And honestly, that sounds pretty good.
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