A decade of deep learning investment, strengthened by new executive leadership, delivers real-time, privacy-safe performance at scale
Cognitiv, the leading advanced performance partner powered by deep learning, announced strong business momentum in 2025, highlighted by 388% growth in ContextGPT™ and the rapid adoption of the company’s deep learning advertising platform. This traction is attributed to accelerating customer growth, strategic investment in talent, and rising demand among brands and agencies for proven AI-driven performance marketing.
“Cognitiv’s co-location strategy with leading SSPs gives us a huge advantage. We can optimize viewability, VCR, and clicks in milliseconds with 10-times the computing power of competitors’ containerized solutions.” – Jeremy Fain, CEO, Cognitiv
Over the past year, marketers and media buyers have turned to Cognitiv to implement Custom Algorithms, and to navigate signal loss, media fragmentation, and rising performance expectations across digital channels. The company is positioned at the center of a major industry shift, as algorithm-driven spending in 2026 is forecast to account for 71.6% of total ad expenditure worldwide, rising to 76% by 2028.
“Our growth reflects a clear shift in how brands and agencies are approaching performance marketing,” said Jeremy Fain, CEO, Cognitiv. “Advertisers are moving beyond self-serve optimization toward automated deep learning systems that can understand context, interpret intent, and drive outcomes at scale. Cognitiv’s co-location strategy with leading SSPs gives us a huge advantage. We can optimize viewability, VCR, and clicks in milliseconds with 10-times the computing power of competitors’ containerized solutions. This enables bidding decisions that respond to live signals at a pace that others cannot match.”
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The Curated Contextual Era is Here
At the center of this growth is Cognitiv’s unique approach to curation, combining ContextGPT’s contextual intelligence with co-located infrastructure that takes media execution beyond a reliance on stale audience segments to unleash the power of real-time algorithmic decisioning for advertisers.
ContextGPT, the industry’s first real-time contextual targeting intelligence platform, helps advertisers understand intent and activate performance without relying on cookies, pixels, or user IDs. Powered by deep learning and advanced language models, ContextGPT interprets content with human-like nuance, enabling brands to deliver more relevant, brand-suitable advertising at scale. In 2025, ContextGPT customer adoption increased more than 44%. Continued innovation, including Interactive Audience Exploration and an upgraded Relevance Engine, delivered up to 40% greater accuracy in connecting brands with custom-defined audiences.
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Advertisers Choose Better Performance
Along with the major enhancements to ContextGPT and Cognitiv’s self-learning Custom Algorithms, customer growth accelerated in 2025, with a 67% increase in overall new clients year over year and a 29% improvement in average ROAS from the first half to the second half of 2025. Cognitiv’s deep learning advertising platform delivered measurable performance gains across key verticals such as CPG, pharma, and travel, with existing customers expanding their relationships and running more campaigns as results improved.
Building the Industry’s Best Team
Cognitiv’s momentum reflects not only business growth, but organizational readiness to scale. To support increasing customer demand and continued product innovation, the company welcomed new talent and promoted dozens of team members across engineering, data science, product, customer success, and go-to-market functions.
2025 marked a pivotal moment in Cognitiv’s evolution with the promotion of Justine Frostad as its first Chief Marketing Officer, signaling a purposeful investment in brand and executive vision as the business enters a new phase of maturity. The year also brought four new VP and SVP additions, alongside multiple senior-level promotions, strengthening the leadership bench and reinforcing a clear commitment to developing talent from within as the company continues to build with momentum.
The company also strengthened its strategic planning with the addition of marketing and media veteran Michael Kassan to its board, underscoring Cognitiv’s maturity and long-term growth trajectory.
