Sightly

Sightly is an advertising technology and media services company built around a patented framework it calls Brand Mentality®, which translates a brand's stated values and objectives into a real-time decision engine for media planning, targeting and activation. The platform analyzes video content and cultural signals — the company cites video-level metadata for 18 million daily videos and more than 2 billion daily data points — to identify which moments, trends and content are suitable for a given brand and to build targeting segments accordingly.

Capabilities span several channels. For YouTube, Sightly operates as a Google Premier Partner and converts content-level signals into targeting lists ("SmartLists") and brand suitability controls. For TikTok, it is a badged TikTok Marketing Partner in the Media Buying Technology category and uses TikTok's API for trending hashtag intelligence, category insights and brand mention monitoring. Connected TV targeting is delivered through partnerships with IRIS.TV and Spectrum, providing video-level contextual targeting and premium CTV inventory, while open-web capabilities extend its brand suitability controls with URL-level transparency.

Alongside media activation, Sightly sells a Decision Intelligence offering that produces cultural insight reporting for creative strategy, crisis anticipation, brand positioning, market research and organic social timing. Delivery follows a four-phase process: building a custom Brand Mentality profile, calibrating machine learning models to the brand's parameters, delivering contextual insights and recommendations, and self-calibrating on client feedback over time.

Founding story

John McIntyre founded the company, which originally carried the name PixelFish and included a corporate video production division; that division was sold as the company refocused on a local video platform connecting consumers with local businesses.

Business model

Sightly offers four engagement paths: a managed service in which a dedicated account team runs media strategy, campaign execution and reporting; a self-service product giving client teams direct access to YouTube and programmatic list building, TikTok trend targeting and CTV marketplace deals; a Decision Intelligence subscription delivering cultural insights and recommendations; and Direct Data Deals that pipe its brand and cultural intelligence into clients' own tools, dashboards and workflows.

Revenue is generated from managed media services, self-service platform access, Decision Intelligence insight subscriptions, and direct data deals that license brand and cultural intelligence into client systems.

Traction

Published client results include a Honda Prologue campaign associated with a 146% lift in searches for "Honda Prologue" and 48% for "Prologue"; a pickle brand TikTok campaign reported at 96% above view-rate benchmark with 15% more efficient CPM; and a United Airlines campaign with a 19-point lift in video completion rate and 20% higher engagement. A joint study with Magna reported up to 3X better brand performance from cultural alignment and speed of activation. Partnerships announced since 2023 include IRIS.TV, AI Digital, WPP, Horizon Media and Vurvey Labs.

Latest developments

Recent announcements include the WPP partnership (November 2025), the Horizon Media AIPilot launch powered by HorizonOS Labs (January 2026), an AI audience partnership with Vurvey Labs (March 2026), executive appointments including Dave Otis as SVP of Sales (March 2026) and Jennifer Lockhart as SVP of Sales (June 2026), promotions of Ben Lambert to CRO (April 2026) and Jacob Miesner to CTO (May 2026), the addition of Robert Harteveldt to the board (April 2026), a video-level curation product for CTV (August 2026), and senior UK and global hires from Captify and GumGum (September 2026).