Web Video Company SeenThis Names Agency Vet John Osborn U.S. President

John Osborn was an adman, and then a media agency exec. Now he’s a tech guy.

Osborn was named U.S. president of SeenThis, a company that brings streaming video ads to the web. 

As the internet turns into TV and TV turns into the internet, SeenThis helps advertisers and publishers deliver video on the open web that is high-quality, ecologically sustainable, and more measurable. 

Osborn told The Measure he has hit the ground running, returning from CES where he was making pitches to potential publishers, retail media and ecommerce clients.

“We need to continue to cut through the noise in the marketplace and show up and show value in our core areas of focus,” he said. “Certainly, agencies and advertisers are still very much in our focus point as well, and so we have a lot to do this year.”

After 20 years at Omnicom-owned BBDO, where he was CEO of the ad agency’s New York Office, Osborn shifted to become CEO of OMD USA, Omnicom’s media buying agency, which he helped reorganize with the goal of making better decisions faster.

He left the agency in 2022 and became the director of Ad Net Zero, an organization aimed at making the ad industry more sustainable. 

Osborn said one of the first companies he encountered while working with Ad Net Zero was SeenThis, which was founded in Stockholm in 2017.

“They were walking the walk, not just talking. Their technology has a lot of benefits and opportunities for carbon emissions reduction,” he said. 

At the same time, publishers and brands are prioritizing video on the web, but often digital video is slow to start and its less-than high-definition quality limits its effectiveness.

SeenThis can take a marketer’s video assets and deliver them in HD across a variety of formats. That enables stronger storytelling, while also enabling analytics to support both performance and full-funnel marketing. That makes SeenThis attractive to publishers and advertisers, as well as to media buyers looking to extend TV and connected TV campaigns.

The company already works with agencies including Horizon and OMD and has programmatic partnerships with many of the major sell-side platforms.

“We’re frictionless. It doesn’t require a new operating system,” he said. “The integrity and the technology itself is just gob-smackingly awesome.”

Osborn became a member of SeenThis’s board of directors last year. The company didn’t have a U.S. president before Osborn signed up for full-time duty.

 “John is an agency leader with a deep understanding of both creative excellence and media performance, the same combination that drives SeenThis. He has been a valuable Board member and advisor for the past two years, and we are very happy to welcome him to our team full time,” said Jesper Benon, CEO and Co-Founder of SeenThis. “He will play a key role in growing our US presence in particular, which is already a core market, and will continue to build on the big momentum.” 

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Ampersand, the advertising company owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, said it launched TrueStream Political, which will offer targeted streaming campaigns for political advertisers.

Political advertising is expected to boom in 2026, with streaming gaining share against broadcast and cable.

Data from Comcast, Charter and Cox will be used by TrueStream Political to authenticate that voters are being reached with ads in premium content.

“Political advertisers are being forced to choose between scale and certainty, and that tradeoff is unacceptable,” said Al Behmoiras, VP political streaming, at Ampersand. “TrueStream Political eliminates that compromise by delivering authenticated household-level reach, exceptional match fidelity, and the premium environments campaigns require. This is what political streaming should be.”

TrueStream Political will coordinate with the unit at Ampersand that sells political advertising on cable.

“Political advertisers are under more pressure than ever to minimize waste and prove that every dollar is working,” said Danny Jester, partner at political ad buyer  GMMB. “Building on the scale of traditional and addressable TV, innovative streaming solutions that bring greater precision, transparency, and premium reach are becoming an essential addition to modern political media strategies.”