Zeta Global to Acquire LiveIntent in a Highly Accretive Transaction

• Expands Zeta’s identity graph, unveils new publisher cloud and accelerates growth in mobile and retail media

• Acquisition meets Zeta’s four guiding M&A principles and is expected to be immediately accretive to Zeta’s earnings profile

• Zeta reaffirms third quarter 2024 guidance

Zeta Global, the AI-Powered Marketing Cloud, announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire LiveIntent. Founded in 2009, LiveIntent is a pioneer in people-based marketing, with proprietary technology powering mobile-centric experiences and first-party identity solutions to identify, unlock, engage, and monetize audiences across channels.

“We share a relentless focus on innovation and an aim to make AI-powered marketing actionable. We are excited to work together to provide marketers and publishers with added capabilities to reach their customers through even more channels.”

The addition of LiveIntent’s assets, publisher network, and channel capabilities will bolster the Zeta Marketing Platform and advance Zeta’s position in AI-powered marketing by:

1. Enhancing identity resolution capabilities. The acquisition integrates LiveIntent’s extensive identity graph—over 235 million unique hashed email addresses per month—into Zeta’s Data Cloud, significantly complementing Zeta’s identity resolution solutions. Authenticated and authoritative identity is the foundation of the Zeta Marketing Platform, and the addition of LiveIntent’s data assets expands Zeta’s scope while increasing the precision of its people-based marketing programs.
2. Expanding into publisher monetization. With the addition of LiveIntent’s 2,000+ premium publishers, including relationships with eight of the top 10 largest in the Comscore rankings, Zeta is entering the publisher monetization business. This paves the way for Zeta to launch a new product offering, the Publisher Cloud, creating a compelling closed-loop ecosystem that rivals the reach and targeting capabilities of walled gardens.
3. Elevating Zeta’s newly released mobile and retail media solutions. The acquisition accelerates Zeta’s recently launched mobile and retail media products, empowering marketers to unify identity across devices and channels, predict customer behavior, uncover hidden opportunities, and leverage AI in real time to activate intelligence-powered cross-channel campaigns that drive better outcomes. LiveIntent powers millions of mobile experiences per day and their recent entry into the retail media ecosystem aligns with Zeta’s strategy to deliver a more innovative set of offerings to retailers and brands.

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“We are excited to welcome LiveIntent to Team Zeta as we continue to build out our position and sharpen our differentiation in AI-powered marketing,” said David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global. “We have gotten to know the LiveIntent team through our work with them over the past five years and have seen firsthand the benefits of their core assets and experienced the impact of their platform. As more brands view first party data as a corporate asset, seek to make AI actionable, and move towards a single platform that powers more efficient and effective marketing across the customer lifecycle, this acquisition accelerates Zeta’s flywheel and positions the combined company to continue to grow faster than the market.”

Steinberg continued, “Consistent with our focused and disciplined approach to M&A, LiveIntent meets all four of our cited M&A principles. Namely, it is a complementary platform we can seamlessly integrate into the Zeta Marketing Platform within six months. This acquisition is immediately accretive to earnings and priced at a highly attractive Adjusted EBITDA multiple of ~16x. We already have interest from Zeta customers in our largest verticals for cross selling opportunities, and we believe these synergies can accelerate LiveIntent’s growth while continuing Zeta’s strong organic growth rates. Bottom-line, we see our combined businesses driving long-term shareholder value and accruing significant benefits to our customers.”

“We’ve been extremely impressed with Zeta’s exceptional growth and proven ability to deliver real impact to their global customers,” said Matt Keiser, CEO of LiveIntent. “We share a relentless focus on innovation and an aim to make AI-powered marketing actionable. We are excited to work together to provide marketers and publishers with added capabilities to reach their customers through even more channels.”

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