Zeta Global (NYSE:ZETA) executives highlighted accelerating growth, expanding profitability, and increased guidance as they reviewed fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, while repeatedly pointing to artificial intelligence initiatives—including the upcoming general availability of Athena—as a key driver of customer adoption and sales momentum.
Fourth-quarter results show continued growth and margin expansion
Co-founder and CEO David Steinberg said Zeta delivered its “eighteenth consecutive beat and raise quarter,” attributing the company’s performance to what he described as a compounding “flywheel” of proprietary data, AI-driven intelligence, and an emerging interface layer through Athena intended to make the platform easier to adopt across large enterprises.
CFO Chris Greiner said Q4 revenue exceeded the midpoint of guidance by $14 million. He also noted the company generated $6.5 million of GAAP net income in the quarter, compared with a net loss of $3.6 million in the prior quarter. Net cash provided by operating activities was $64.1 million, and free cash flow was $55.8 million, up 76% year-over-year, representing a 14% free cash flow margin.
Full-year 2025: broad-based vertical growth and rising retention
Greiner said 2025 revenue totaled $1.305 billion, up 30% year-over-year, or 27% when excluding LiveIntent, Marigold, and prior-year political candidate revenue. The company’s adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was $279 million, representing a 21.4% margin, and free cash flow was $165 million, a 12.6% margin and up 78% year-over-year.
Zeta also emphasized customer expansion trends. Steinberg said net revenue retention reached a record 120% in 2025, up from 114% in 2024, while RFP volume more than doubled year-over-year. Greiner added that total scaled customer count ended the year at 602, up 14% year-over-year, and super-scaled customers totaled 184, up 24% year-over-year.
Greiner said that for the first time as a public company, nine of Zeta’s top 10 verticals grew more than 20% year-over-year in 2025. He cited several of the fastest-growing verticals:
- Travel and hospitality: up 105%
- Advertising and marketing: up 70%
- Automotive: up 60%
- Consumer and retail: up 46%
He also noted healthcare—an area of “new investment”—grew over 20% and showed “strong momentum.”
Athena, OpenAI partnership, and “One Zeta” strategy
Steinberg described Athena—introduced at Zeta Live in October—as a “super intelligent agent” designed specifically for enterprise marketing. He said early users are reporting significant time savings across segmentation, production, and analysis, along with improved ROI. Management said Athena remains on track to be generally available by the end of the first quarter.
In Q&A, Steinberg said Athena’s first two capabilities are centered on “Insights” and “Advisor,” selected because they are expected to provide the greatest near-term customer benefit. He characterized the existing Zeta Marketing Platform as “like a Boeing 747,” arguing Athena enables marketers to operate the platform more easily through natural language. He added that additional functionality will be delivered through Athena rather than as separate agents, and said early feedback has been “game-changing” from a workflow perspective.
At CES, Zeta also announced a partnership with OpenAI. Steinberg said large language models should be viewed as foundational technologies, with differentiation coming from the data, workflows, and operating systems built on top. He said the OpenAI relationship is “foundational to Athena,” while also noting Zeta works with multiple model providers.
Steinberg also underscored the role of Zeta’s SuperGraph, which he described as a deterministic identity and relationship graph within its Data Cloud. He said it operates at scale across more than 245 million U.S. adults and 535 million globally, with more than 1 trillion signals, most of which he said are available only to Zeta.
On sales execution, executives said “One Zeta” is now a repeatable sales model. Steinberg said the number of scaled customers using more than one use case rose more than 80% year-over-year in Q4, and he cited an average 200% to 300% revenue uplift historically when customers expand from one use case to multiple. Greiner added that nearly 25% of scaled customers are now on more than one use case, up from about 13% a year ago.
Marigold integration and shareholder returns
Steinberg said the integration of Marigold is progressing well and reiterated expectations that it will be accretive to free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA in year one. He also said Zeta is seeing interest from Zeta customers in adopting Marigold’s loyalty product, and later noted plans to integrate Athena into loyalty in a future release cadence.
On capital allocation, management highlighted share repurchases. Greiner said Zeta repurchased 1.9 million shares for $35 million in Q4 and 7.9 million shares for $120 million for the full year. He added that since Jan. 1, 2026 through mid-February, Zeta repurchased an additional 1.5 million shares for $25 million, with roughly $139 million remaining under its authorization. Steinberg said buybacks are currently the “single best use” of capital, while also noting Zeta has historically been active in acquisitions.
Greiner also pointed to progress reducing stock-based compensation and dilution, saying stock-based compensation as a percentage of revenue improved from 19% in 2024 to 14% in 2025, while total net dilution was 4.3% in 2025 (or 2.2% excluding Marigold).
Guidance raised for 2026; updated 2028 targets
Zeta raised guidance for both the first quarter and full-year 2026. For full-year 2026, Greiner said the company lifted the midpoint of revenue guidance by $25 million to $1.755 billion, implying 35% year-over-year growth (or 21% when excluding Marigold and political candidate revenue). He emphasized that none of the raise was tied to political candidate revenue assumptions, which remain $15 million in 2026, split as $7 million in Q3 and $8 million in Q4.
For Q1 2026, the company expects revenue of $370 million at the midpoint, representing 40% year-over-year growth (or 22% excluding political candidate and Marigold). Greiner also raised 2026 adjusted EBITDA midpoint guidance to $391 million, and free cash flow midpoint guidance to $231 million. He said the company expects to generate positive GAAP net income for full-year 2026, calling Q4 profitability an “inflection point.”
Additionally, Zeta updated its 2028 targets to reflect the Marigold acquisition, raising the revenue target to $2.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA target to $573 million, with a free cash flow target of $371 million.
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.
