Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Can’t Secure Their Own Customer Data

I ‘hacked’ Zeta Global’s marketing data in order to figure out their largest customers and prospects and tie this out with Zeta’s…

Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Can’t Secure Their Own Customer Data

I ‘hacked’ Zeta Global’s marketing data in order to figure out their largest customers and prospects and tie this out with Zeta’s financials. If Zeta cannot secure their own customer data, they likely cannot secure any customer data. Opinion: ZETA is a Strong Sell.

Background

During the week of October 7–11, 2024 I was able to access a list of all Zeta Global conference attendees as Zeta Global did not secure this data. There is no actual “hack” here and I did not access any backend nor inaccessible database. Rather, Zeta Global was sloppy/lazy/dumb enough to keep their own customer data available on the public internet. I have secured what I believe is a very close proxy of Zeta Global’s customer list, including individual customer names, job titles, and companies that actively use Zeta Global.

Zeta Global clients should be warned that if Zeta Global is playing this “fast and loose” with data from the people who give them money and contribute revenue, similar holes likely exist elsewhere.

Last week, I wrote about Zeta Global’s reliance on United States election season to generate their “edge” in data collection from political extremist blogs and betting markets, plus Zeta’s questionable usage of “AI” which I believe in Zeta’s case refers less to “Artificial Intelligence” and more to Indian workers mass blasting email spam, plus the fact that Zeta Global is using a so-called “Zeta 2025” Plan in investor materials to guide investors to a maximum equity value to align with the 2024 election season, after which I believe Zeta Global has no plan. Simply put, Zeta Global’s business model relies heavily on collecting data from people who use Zeta’s Disqus product to post insane comments on political materials. This is Zeta’s “edge” which will soon dissipate just as their “Zeta 2025” Plan is reached.

At the end of this article I have available a link to the data I pulled off Zeta’s public, free, accessible portal.

Zeta’s Customer Data Leak: Zeta’s ‘Zeta Live 2024’ Virtual Conference

For the past few months, Zeta Global has promoted their annual Zeta Live 2024 Conference on September 26, 2024. This conference is free and public for anyone to join.

In fact, Shaq was even advertised as the featured speaker.

Within Zeta’s conference portal, there is a tab that literally anyone can access which has the names, job titles, and companies of every attendee listed. Again, this is free, public, and made available by Zeta Global.

Inside the portal, simply click:

  1. Community
  2. Attendees

and literally anyone on the internet can get access to the list of Zeta customers and prospects who have signed up for the conference.

By clicking “Community” then “Attendees” on this publicly available, free portal literally anyone on the internet can filter through who joined Zeta Global’s conference — a large oversight on Zeta Global’s part. Note how easy it is to get insights into which companies are likely spending a lot on Zeta Global by counting the # of attendees and noting their job titles.

Then, it’s just a matter of simply scrolling and paginating through thousands of names to see who signed up and joined Zeta Live 2024. Plus, as the data is manually input by human conference goers, there many spelling errors that occur but can be easily cleaned up.

(Note: On slower internet connections and depending on browser/hardware it may prove difficult to render the full lists. However, it’s easily doable if optimized, or with some elbow grease.)

This is one of the most embarrassing data leaks I’ve personally seen. For one, there is no “hacking” needed here, this information about Zeta Global’s customer base down to individuals is readily available to anyone on the public internet. For two, Zeta Global positions itself as a secure marketing data platform yet they clearly did not even secure their own data about their own marketing efforts.

Results

My goal here is identifying the primary large customers of Zeta Global and tying this off as close as possible to what Zeta Global reports in financials and in investor materials.

For example, on Zeta Global’s last earnings supplement delivered with their quarter on July 31, 2024 Zeta claimed:

  • 468 Scaled Customers, meaning customers from which Zeta Global generated at least $100,000 of revenue on a trailing twelve-month (TTM) basis.
  • 144 Super-Scaled Customers, meaning the subset of Total Scaled Customers from which Zeta Global generated at least $1,000,000 of revenue on a trailing twelve-month (TTM) basis.
From Zeta Global’s most recent earnings supplement presentation from July 31, 2024. https://s202.q4cdn.com/623583957/files/doc_financials/2024/q2/2Q-24-Earnings-Supplemental.pdf

By simply cleaning up the conference attendance data a bit, we can start backing into who is most likely using Zeta Global.

We can also cross-check this back.

For example, Victoria’s Secret seems to be the retail brand with the most people signed up for the Zeta Live 2024 Conference.

We can see they have employees across data, marketing, IT, project management, CRM, and everything else all signed up for the Zeta conference — clearly with this many employees across many departments there’s a there there.

Victoria’s Secret employees who signed up to attend Zeta Live 2024, taken from the public portal.

Several patterns here are very clear:

  1. There is a ton of SNL Life Group-related life insurance in Zeta’s base, from MassMutual, John Hancock, Pacific Life, Securian, Prudential, State Farm, Zurich, and more.
  2. We can easily see that a number of LiveIntent employees attended this conference, and only last week in October was Zeta’s acquisition of LiveIntent announced. The savvy observer would have seen this M&A coming.
  3. A number of financial buyers including Citadel are likely buying “alt data” for consumer sentiment. In fact, Citadel had at least 16 employees present on the Zeta 2024 Conference attendees list. If this is the end use case for Citadel, essentially Citadel is able to trade not only on Zeta but on Zeta’s own customers.

Conclusion

This is absolutely pathetic from Zeta Global. What is very obviously a close proxy of their customers has been exposed to the public internet because of Zeta’s own actions and negligence.

The data set is available here at this link.

Tab 1 is what Zeta Global, through incompetence or negligence, made available on the open, public internet.

Tab 2 is some very light cleaning I performed mostly just to get rid of obvious errors and spelling differences.

Tab 3 is a simple pivot of Tab 2, sorted to show which companies had the highest amount of employees sign up for the Zeta 2024 Conference.

(Note: You may disagree with my methodology about how I’ve rolled up certain subsidiaries or cleaned data. To that I say: you have the raw data, so please go do it yourself then.)

Customers would be wise to consider the data security around Zeta Global.

I believe ZETA is a Strong Sell.

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This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. Lauren Balik does not represent the interests of any fund or of any investor other than herself. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This content speaks only as of the date published. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.