For years, the promise of contextual advertising in streaming has been just out of reach. Not because the vision wasn't right — but because the technology wasn't ready. That's changed.

At this year's IAB NewFronts, Anoki took the mainstage to make the case that we've crossed a threshold: AI can now understand video the way a human does — seeing the visuals, hearing the audio, reading the emotion of every scene — and translate that understanding into intelligence that actually means something for an advertiser. There was no better stage to make that case than the IAB NewFronts, alongside some of the most forward-thinking companies in streaming: Spectrum Reach, LG Ad Solutions, Allen Media Group, and moderator Shannan Ferry, Emmy Award-Winning News Anchor for Spectrum News NY1.

AI That Starts With the Problem, Not the Technology

Anoki was not built by asking what AI could do. It was built by asking what CTV needed.

As Raghu Kodige, Anoki's Co-Founder and CEO, put it at NewFronts: "I wasn't looking for a problem to attach AI to. I started with the problem. CTV had incredible content, a growing audience, but a targeting infrastructure still using blunt instruments — genre tags, broad blocks, one-size metadata."

The question Anoki set out to answer was whether AI could watch content the way a human does — simultaneously understanding visuals, audio, and emotion at every scene — and generate intelligence that advertisers could actually act on. What made that possible now, after years of the industry wanting it, is the convergence of multimodal AI and modern compute power. The technology has finally matured to the point where machine-scale understanding of video is not just theoretically possible — it's real, it's fast, and it's live.

That is ContextIQ. And the implications go well beyond on-demand content.

Solved: Brand-Suitable Advertising for Live News

Live news has always been one of the highest-attention environments in television. Viewers lean in. They stay. They trust what they watch. And yet for years, it has been one of the most avoided categories in advertising — not because the content wasn't valuable, but because the tools to navigate it responsibly didn't exist.

ContextIQ for Live News changes that. By evaluating topic sensitivity and context in real time — tracking story continuity and segment transitions as they happen — ContextIQ replaces static keyword exclusions and broad category blocks with structured, dynamic suitability signals built for the pace and unpredictability of live content. Advertisers can now align with live news, weather, sports, and community programming with clarity and confidence, at scale.

The deployment includes a strategic partnership with Allen Media Group (AMG), bringing ContextIQ across AMG's full streaming portfolio — spanning live news, weather, sports, and premium entertainment, including Local Now across key markets including Los Angeles and Orlando.

"Local news and weather coverage are essential services for viewers across the country. Our partnership with Anoki enables brands to invest in our content with confidence — strengthening the economic foundation that sustains trusted journalism, diverse media ownership, and the communities we serve."
— Byron Allen, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Allen Media Group

Read the full press release →   
Coverage also appeared in Media Play News →    Media Post →   TV News Check →

It Takes an Ecosystem

The NewFronts session brought together leaders from across the streaming and advertising industry to discuss what this technology unlocks — and what it means for where the business goes from here. The conversation made one thing clear: the industry is ready to move from avoidance to opportunity.

Serge Matta, President of Global Ad Sales at LG Ad Solutions, captured the shift brands have wanted to see:

"Brands are telling us they want to avoid news. They don't want to touch it because news is sometimes toxic. Even though there's a ton of scale in news — local news, weather, sports — they just don't want it. What they needed was a trusted third party to come in and tell them, in real time, that this news is safe. And it has to be in real time."

Darren Olive, President of Streaming Sales at Allen Media Digital, pushed the thinking further — from avoidance to opportunity:

"The reactive approach is creating a safe environment, making sure there's a buffer if there's something questionable. The real opportunity is reversing that — finding the content, the contextual segments, the moments that you want to be wrapped around — and advertising adjacent to that. That, to me, is the real exciting piece of this."

Alexander Groysman, Vice President of Advertising Product Development at Spectrum Reach, spoke to what it took to build confidence in the technology — and what it delivered:

"We spent a significant amount of time stress-testing the system. When we're saying something is weather, it needs to be weather. If we're saying something is political news, it has to be political news. We were able to get from a scan of a frame to a decisioning point within seconds — not hours, not days. And in a live news environment where things change very, very fast, that speed is really important. The technology's finally catching up to our aspirations."

The panel was moderated by Shannan Ferry, Emmy Award-Winning News Anchor for News All Day on Spectrum News NY1 — a journalist who has anchored hours of live, unscripted television and understands better than most what it means for audiences to trust what they're watching. Her presence grounded the conversation in something real: live news matters to viewers, and the brands that show up there have a chance to be part of something meaningful.

Closing the session, Abbey Thomas, Anoki's Chief Commercial Officer, and Dan Callahan, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer of Spectrum Reach, delivered the message to buyers directly. As Dan put it from the stage: "Live news isn't risk — it's reach."

Go Deeper

Anoki CCO Abbey Thomas sat down with Beet.TV at NewFronts to go deeper on the future of live news advertising and what ContextIQ means for media buyers.

Watch Beet.TV's interview with Abbey Thomas →

What's Next

The pipes are live. The technology is real-time. And a category of premium, high-attention inventory that advertisers have avoided for years is now open — with no compromise on brand suitability.

This is what it looks like when the age of information meets the age of intelligence.

Want to see ContextIQ in action? Get in touch →

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