AI and Samba TV Power Subjective's New Real-Time CTV Ad Engine

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 07, 2026 – A new partnership is set to reshape the connected TV (CTV) advertising landscape, promising to translate human marketing ideas into machine-speed decisions. Subjective, an AI-native curation platform, announced today it is integrating data from media intelligence leader Samba TV to power its real-time decisioning engine, Ethos. The collaboration aims to enable advertisers to take unstructured inputs, such as campaign briefs and creative assets, and transform them into dynamically curated, biddable ad inventory across the sprawling CTV ecosystem.

This move signals a significant shift in adtech, moving beyond traditional targeting parameters and toward a more intuitive, AI-driven process that could fundamentally change how media is planned, bought, and executed.

The AI Engine Room: How It Works

At the heart of the partnership is the fusion of two powerful technologies. Subjective’s Ethos engine is built on what the company calls an "AI-native" architecture, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to interpret complex, human-generated concepts. This allows the platform to understand the nuance, intent, and goals within a creative brief—documents that have historically required extensive human analysis before being translated into a media plan.

Fueling this AI brain is the vast, real-time data stream from Samba TV. Unlike data derived from secondary sources, Samba TV gathers proprietary, first-party viewership intelligence directly from millions of opted-in connected televisions across more than 24 smart TV brands globally. Its Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology identifies on-screen content in real-time, whether it's linear TV, streaming video, or even video games. This provides a granular, second-by-second understanding of what audiences are actually watching.

The integration means Subjective's Ethos engine can now combine its LLM-based understanding of a campaign's goals with Samba TV's real-time behavioral data. The result is a platform capable of making millions of decisions per second, creating what the companies call "predictive audiences" and ensuring contextual relevance. For an advertiser, this means the system can autonomously identify and bid on ad slots within programming that aligns with a campaign’s specific creative tone, target audience, and strategic objectives, all in real time.

“Subjective represents a new generation of adtech platforms built on AI-native architecture,” said Ashwin Navin, Co-Founder & CEO of Samba TV. “Data collaboration with Samba demonstrates what’s possible when real-time behavioral data fuels media decisioning.”

Redefining the Media Buy for Brands

For advertisers in competitive sectors like CPG, automotive, and entertainment, the promise is a move away from rigid, pre-planned campaigns toward a more fluid and responsive strategy. The traditional process of translating a marketing brief into a media buy can be slow and subject to interpretation. This new model aims to collapse that timeline, enabling what one executive called activation at "the speed of culture."

“Ethos was built to translate human intent into machine-speed decisions,” explained Lindsay Silver, Co-Founder & CEO of Subjective. “Samba TV’s real-time media intelligence adds a critical signal layer that allows our AI to curate, predict, and activate CTV inventory in ways that simply weren’t possible before.” Silver emphasized that the goal is to help advertisers "move from static planning to dynamic, real-time execution—turning briefs and creative into actionable media with unprecedented speed, scale, and transparency.”

This approach is already garnering praise from major content players. Jason Schmidt, Vice President and Global Head of Commercial Data at Condé Nast, commented on the partnership’s potential. “Bringing real-time behavioral intelligence into premium CTV environments is exactly where the industry needs to go,” Schmidt stated. “With Subjective and Samba TV, brands now have a way to activate campaigns at the speed of culture, without compromising on data quality or strategic control. This is a clear step toward a more intelligent, agile future for media buying.”

The ultimate benefit for brands is the potential for significantly improved return on investment (ROI). By dynamically matching ads to the most relevant audiences and contexts in real time, the partnership aims to enhance campaign effectiveness and reduce wasted ad spend, all while providing a transparent view into the decision-making process.

Navigating a Crowded and Competitive Field

While the concept of using AI in advertising is not new, the Subjective-Samba TV approach introduces a novel workflow that sets it apart in a competitive market. Major adtech players have been heavily investing in AI for years. The Trade Desk's Kokai AI, for instance, processes millions of ad impressions per second to optimize bidding, while sell-side platforms like Magnite use machine learning to improve CTV addressability and contextual targeting. Google's DV360 similarly leverages its AI prowess to enhance campaign management across the CTV landscape.

However, this partnership's key differentiator lies in its starting point: the unstructured creative brief. While other platforms use AI primarily for optimization and bidding on pre-defined parameters, Subjective’s Ethos is designed to interpret the foundational "why" of a campaign. By feeding this high-level intent into an engine powered by Samba TV's ground-truth viewership data, the platform aims to automate a strategic function that has long been the domain of human planners. This unique combination of LLM-based strategic interpretation and real-time behavioral data could offer a new level of agility that competitors may need to address.

The Future of the Viewer Experience

For the millions of people watching connected TVs, this technological advancement could subtly reshape their viewing experience. The ultimate goal for advertisers is to deliver commercials that are not only seen but are also relevant and engaging. By creating a better match between the ad, the content, and the viewer, this AI-driven curation has the potential to make advertising feel less intrusive and more like a natural part of the content stream.

This level of personalization inevitably raises questions about data privacy. In this regard, Samba TV has built its model on an opt-in foundation, meaning users explicitly consent to data collection when setting up their smart TVs. The company has also been a proponent of privacy-centric technologies, developing identity solutions like its SambaID that function without relying on cookies or mobile ad IDs—a critical advantage in an increasingly privacy-conscious digital world. This framework provides a privacy-compliant "signal layer" for Subjective's AI to operate within.

As the industry moves toward a future without third-party cookies, solutions that leverage first-party, consent-based data and sophisticated AI to deliver relevance are becoming paramount. The collaboration between Subjective and Samba TV is a clear indicator of this trend, representing a sophisticated step toward a more intelligent and responsive advertising ecosystem that balances brand objectives with the privacy of the modern viewer.