Zeta Global NYSE: ZETA reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $443 million, up 44% from a year earlier, or 28% excluding revenue from mergers and acquisitions. The company said the result marked its 20th consecutive quarter of beating and raising its outlook.
Adjusted EBITDA rose 56% year over year to $92 million, producing a 20.7% margin that expanded 170 basis points. Zeta also reported GAAP net income of $8.2 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with a net loss of $12.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Free cash flow reached $58 million, an increase of 73% from a year earlier.
“We delivered our 20th consecutive beat and raise quarter,” Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO David Steinberg said. He described Zeta as evolving beyond its historical marketing-technology positioning into an “intelligent AI infrastructure platform,” with marketing as its first application rather than its sole focus.
Guidance Raised Across Revenue, Profit and Cash Flow
Based on its second-quarter performance, Zeta raised the midpoint of its full-year revenue outlook by $33 million to $1.818 billion. The updated forecast implies 39% annual revenue growth, or 25% growth excluding M&A and political candidate revenue.
- Third-quarter revenue is expected to be $471 million at the midpoint, up $10 million from prior guidance.
- Full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance was increased by $8 million at the midpoint to $405 million.
- Third-quarter adjusted EBITDA is forecast at $115 million at the midpoint, up $3 million from the previous outlook.
- Full-year free-cash-flow guidance rose by $20 million at the midpoint to $255 million.
- Full-year GAAP EPS guidance increased to a midpoint of $0.10, compared with the prior range of $0.02 to $0.04.
Chief Financial Officer Chris Greiner said the outlook retains a 2% to 5% cushion and assumes minimal contribution from new partnership-related revenue. The company maintained its prior second-half outlook for political candidate revenue of $7 million in the third quarter and $8 million in the fourth quarter.
Greiner said Zeta’s full-year GAAP EPS outlook excludes the possible impact of a one-time tax benefit associated with the release of a valuation allowance, which he said has a reasonable probability of occurring later in the year.
AI Adoption and Platform Usage
Zeta highlighted adoption of Athena, its conversational AI offering, as a driver of engagement and expansion. Since Athena became available to enterprise customers about 130 days ago, more than 40% of super-scaled customers have become monthly active users, according to Greiner. Super-scaled customers are those with at least $1 million in annual revenue.
The company said 83% of Athena customer interactions are now spoken. Steinberg said OpenAI powers Athena’s voice functionality, while Zeta’s own inference models make decisions using the company’s Data Cloud. He said no large language models access data within Zeta’s Data Cloud.
According to Zeta, the 20% of its overall customer base that has comprehensively adopted its AI tools accounts for roughly 70% of revenue. Among super-scaled customers, the 50% that have comprehensively adopted those tools produce 75% of super-scaled customer revenue. These AI-focused users grew four times faster than customers still early in adoption, Greiner said.
Zeta also said the customers with the most extensive AI adoption had year-to-date net revenue retention 400 basis points above the company-wide level and more than 20 percentage points above customers with lower adoption. The company said its super-scaled customer relationships average 56 months, compared with 48 months several years ago.
Steinberg added that 90% of new code generated during the quarter was automated, up from 75% in the first quarter. He said this has shortened product-development cycles and allowed Zeta to respond more quickly to customer requests.
Customer Growth, Sales Productivity and Partnerships
Zeta ended the quarter with 197 super-scaled customers, up 17% year over year. Quarterly average revenue per super-scaled customer was $1.8 million, also up 17%. Greiner said both growth measures exceeded the company’s longer-term model assumptions.
The company pointed to cross-selling activity under its One Zeta initiative and following its Marigold acquisition. Customers using more than one use case increased 90% year over year, while customers using five or more channels rose more than 50%. Cross-sell and upsell deals won during the quarter increased 43%.
Zeta said its total sales pipeline increased more than 60% from a year earlier and by more than $100 million over the preceding 90 days. Pipeline creation per seller more than doubled year over year, while average contract values on closed deals rose more than 40%. Quota-carrying headcount totaled 198, up 11% from a year earlier and one employee sequentially.
The company cited demand across consumer and retail, telecommunications, healthcare, financial services and automotive. Eight of its top 10 industries grew more than 20% year over year on a trailing-12-month basis, Greiner said.
Steinberg said Zeta is seeing a marketing-cloud replacement cycle among large enterprises. He cited Gap as a customer that selected Zeta under a multiyear agreement as its system of record for a next-generation marketing stack. Steinberg said Zeta displaced Salesforce and three other vendors in that deployment.
Expansion Beyond Marketing
Zeta also discussed Zeta Business Intelligence, or ZBI, which it said expands the platform into a fourth use case beyond customer acquisition, growth and retention. Steinberg described ZBI as a tool for using business and customer data to make predictions and take action in real time, rather than simply creating static reports.
He said initial ZBI applications include helping a sports and entertainment company evaluate entertainment spending and streaming-distribution relationships, as well as helping an energy drink brand quantify its impact on retail partners. Zeta is being “pulled into” such uses by customers, Steinberg said, and is productizing customer requests by industry.
The company also highlighted expanded relationships with OpenAI, Snowflake and Palantir. Zeta said its Data Cloud was fully integrated with Palantir Foundry as of July 31 and that it had already secured multiple initial combined-sale agreements. Steinberg said the Foundry integration is complete and seamless for customers.
During the quarter, Zeta deployed $29.9 million to repurchase 1.6 million shares. Through July 30, it had spent $74.6 million on repurchases and had approximately $89.4 million remaining under its authorization. The company also closed a new $1 billion credit facility, including a $250 million term loan and an undrawn $750 million revolving credit facility.
About Zeta Global (NYSE:ZETA)
Zeta Global, founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York City, is a leading data-driven marketing technology company. The firm's mission centers on helping brands acquire, grow and retain customers through a unified customer lifecycle management platform. Over the years, Zeta Global has built a reputation for leveraging big data and predictive analytics to power digital marketing programs across multiple channels.
At the core of Zeta's offering is the Zeta Marketing Platform, which combines identity resolution, audience insights and real-time engagement capabilities.
This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to contact@marketbeat.com.
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