Barcelona Albert Nietofounder Seed markIt is theirs 40 Years one of the references for the Spanish entrepreneurship ecosystem. In just one decade, his company moved out of a shared apartment in a Madrid neighborhood Chueca To become an almost multinational company 800 Staff, and presence in 17 Countries and a leadership role in USA.
Its model, which has changed the way brands communicate with users, is contextual advertising, a system that places ads on websites that do not rely on Cookies Or personal data, but depending on the content and relevance of the web pages. This is a more privacy-friendly approach, as it does not store information about readers’ preferences and anticipates the future of an increasingly regulated sector.
Neetu, a member of a middle-class family, studied Economics and business in Pompeu Fabra University From Barcelona, she completed her Master’s degree in Industrial organization in University of Amsterdam He studied innovation in Stanford University. His future seemed written GoogleWhere he even worked as a data analyst 2014 He decided to leave the tech giant to work with his partner Jorge Boyatos Which is now the largest contextual advertising company in the world.
They started Seedtag with 400,000 euros Five employees share the apartment with three others Start-ups. This bet coincided with the rise in mobile traffic and they had a hunch: digital images were space being wasted on advertising. “With mobile browsing, images took up a large portion of the screen, but no one was using them for advertising purposes,” he recalls.
Selling what is in the picture
His first invention was to place interactive ads within images: if a digital media outlet published a photo of a football player, a link to the shoes he was wearing would appear. “Eight years later, Instagram came up with a similar idea,” says Nieto, speaking with ACTUALIDAD ECONÓMICA at the just-opened campus. Business Institute In Soho New Yorkwhere he participated with other entrepreneurs in a version of South Summit to Start-ups.
The idea didn’t work. “the Links They generated a lot of traffic, but the sales conversion rate was very low and the products were not purchased. “Brands, who compared us to other conversion channels, saw that investing with us was not paying off, so they ran a campaign and it will never happen again,” he recalls. They managed to survive for a year with minimal sales. But, almost by accident, and when all they had was… 100,000 euros In the box, the idea arose that would make them one of the greatest unicorn candidates in Spain.
“We went to sell the product to the agency Omnicom. When we were leaving, when we were leaving, the team stopped us. Renault And he says to us, “Hey, are you the kids who put ads on the pictures?” Yes yes. “Well, I don’t want to try.” At first we didn’t see much sense in it because who would want to buy a car online? But they weren’t interested in it E-commerceBut the possibility of linking to specific groups of images. They were launching a Renault Kadjar and wanted to capture the adventure. So we created a banner Very nice to be integrated into the image and put into context using our technology. The result was a rate Clicks “Brutal,” Nieto explains.
This discovery changed the course. They discovered that their technology was not useful for selling products directly, but rather for building a brand, connecting content and values. “Volvo I wanted family and security; coca colaChristmas; Heinekenheroes. “We went from a failed product to a product that sold itself.”
Artificial intelligence training
And then they started to grow. In just three years they were gone from the Bills 5000 euros to Eight millionexpanded by France, Italy, Mexico, UK, Holland and Brazil. ADRA projects I invested two million. Oakley CapitaFor, 40 million in 2021, and Advent Internationalanother 250 million in 2022, cementing Seedtag as one of Europe’s most promising technology companies. They work with more than 20,000 Publishing groups and with major global automotive, technology or food brands. “All the people you see on TV,” he sums up proudly.
During this decade, they trained their own artificial intelligence, which they called Lizwhich can be analyzed 10,000 items per minute And understand its content accurately on a human level. Liz It identifies the most relevant environments for each brand and performs a deep semantic analysis that allows the message to be adapted to the appropriate context. If a user is browsing a travel page, they will be shown hotel ads that are also friendly, personal and contextual, without storing information about the visitor.
“If the goal is for the user not to feel like he or she is being followed online, contextual advertising is the solution,” Nieto says. Their philosophy is clear: “Effective advertising does not need to be invasive.”
Neto considers contextual advertising “a great alternative to… Cookies“, those small files that, once accepted by a user, are stored in his browser and collect information about his browsing habits, allowing him to display personalized ads based on his profile and history.
Ethical use
He believes that there is growing concern in public opinion about privacy, and even speaks of “a great wave of… Privacy first advertising“, which prioritizes the “ethical use of data.” “We have gone too far with online data. Proof of this is the proliferation of ad blockers, which more and more people are installing. People feel their privacy violated; The industry is out of control. That’s why there are more and more laws that try to protect citizens, e.g General Data Protection Regulation In Europe or California Consumer Privacy Act In the United States of America. “Respect in advertising is on everyone’s lips,” he says.
Nieto and his partner Boyatos have gone further with what they call “neurocontextual advertising,” a technique that also measures the emotions an ad generates in a user. In collaboration with scientists from Columbia UniversityAnd analyze how the human brain responds to different stimuli. “A contextual analysis might say that an article about the characteristics of A BMW And another about Formula 1 They are both cars. But analysis of the neural context reveals that the former generates a much higher purchase intention for the car compared to the latter.
Seedtag’s AI is already categorizing millions of articles based on context and emotion, helping brands position their message in the most effective environment. Topics preferred by advertisers are articles LifestyleFashion, sports, technology and health, while news related to politics and events are excluded because “advertisers consider them controversial topics.”
In August 2022Nieto landed at the airport John Kennedy. Hailing from New York, he still remembers the mix of giddy and excitement he felt then: “We didn’t have any customers, no employees, no well-known brand in this country, but I was convinced that Seedtag would succeed here.”
The price of success
After opening offices in New York. chicago, Miami and Los AngelesThe expansion has turned out “much better” than they expected. Today, North America accounts for half of the company’s revenue, which it will exceed globally this year 400 million dollars.
However, success comes at a price. “There were years where I traveled for 130 days and woke up not knowing what city I was in,” he admits. Nieto intends to return to Spain at the end of the year. He will no longer be CEO of Seedtag, and although he will remain on the board of directors, he is already thinking about new projects.
“In my case, it is very difficult to decide what is work and what is not,” he says. “Seedtag is in my head every waking hour. But I love work and live it in a positive way, knowing that I am lucky. When I was 28, I could spend three weeks a month away from home; today my priorities are different.”
He emphasizes that one of the keys to his company’s success is the diversity of profiles within it. He sees things as an economist, while Poyatus presents the perspective of an engineer. “There’s a lot of talk about cultural or gender diversity, but what provides the most value, and what interests me most, is diversity: facing the same problem from different mental structures. Seeing how a physicist, mathematician or philosopher approaches a challenge from different angles greatly increases the quality of the final solution.”
Neto often mentions his partner, Poyatus. “Jorge is a genius,” he says. “He excels at what I lack, and vice versa. We are very different, but we are very analytical, and this allows us to speak the same language.” Both have created one of the most successful entrepreneurship stories of the last decade in Spain.
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