PubMatic & Overtone Partner to Power the Open Internet with Contextual Intelligence

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, has today (May 1st, 2025) announced a partnership with Overtone, a contextual intelligence partner redefining digital relevance for brands from a human perspective.

The partnership sets a new standard for how digital advertising can deliver performance, relevance, and responsibility, ensuring that advertising not only drives ROI but also fuels the open internet, professional journalism, and the stories that shape our culture.

Overtone’s proprietary AI technology identifies the narrative context of digital content at the page and paragraph level in real time, going far beyond the capabilities of traditional brand safety filters.

In this partnership, Overtone's technology is applied across the open internet inventory available via PubMatic’s platform. Inventory can be segmented to create brand-resonant contextual audiences, enabling advertisers to run campaigns in relevant, high-quality environments, including previously excluded inventory like trusted news content, while maintaining brand suitability.

“At PubMatic, we believe digital advertising is the lifeline of the open internet, supporting professional journalism, cultural storytelling, and the content that connects communities. This partnership with Overtone enables us to help brands show up in meaningful, contextually relevant environments that were previously out of reach due to blunt brand safety tools. By applying nuance and intelligence to inventory curation, we’re unlocking new value for advertisers while reinforcing our commitment to funding a diverse, accessible, and sustainable digital content ecosystem.” — Emma Newman, chief revenue officer, EMEA, PubMatic

“Advertisers are now demanding more than just performance and safety, they want meaningful connections with customers at scale. Together with PubMatic, we’re excited to meet that demand by introducing contextual resonance infrastructure directly into the global programmatic supply path. Narrative matters, and this partnership enables advertisers to identify environments that are not only brand safe and suitable, but also contextually aligned and emotionally resonant with their target audiences.” – Philip Allin, CEO, Overtone

As the industry progresses towards a cookieless future, brands and publishers are in urgent need of scalable, privacy-first alternatives to audience targeting that don’t rely on third-party data. This collaboration directly addresses three of the most pressing challenges faced by digital advertisers today:

• Blunt brand safety tools often conflate risk with relevance. Overtone’s paragraph-level narrative analysis, against a range of dimensions, unlocks safe, brand-aligned, resonant media environments.
• Overused off-the-shelf audience segments often lack freshness. Overtone identifies and maps contextually engaged communities in real time.
• Cultural opportunities that help build brand value are frequently missed. Overtone enables real-time activation during live moments—across news, sports, entertainment, and industry events.

This partnership enhances PubMatic’s efforts to deliver transparent, high-performance solutions while reinforcing the company's #fundedbyadvertising mission: to support the content, journalism, and storytelling that keep the open internet vibrant and accessible.