Zeta Global has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire makreting platform LiveIntent. The cost will be $250 million in cash and stock.
Zeta Global is a marketing cloud that applies AI to trillions of consumer signals allowing marketers to acquire and retain customers more efficiently using the Zeta Marketing Platform. LiveIntent is also a marketing platform with its roots in email. In acquiring the company, Zeta also acquires the LiveIntent Identity Graph. The plan is to incorporate this identity data into Zeta’s own consumer database.
Publisher monetization. What’s new is that Zeta enters the publisher monetization business through LiveIntent’s relationships with over 2,000 premium publishers. This will enable a new solution, the Zeta Publisher Cloud, which will rival the reach and targeting capabilities of walled gardens (said Zeta in a release).
More mobile. LiveIntent also brings advanced mobile marketing capabilities to supplement Zeta’s new mobile solution announced a few days ago. Both vendors have also recently waded into the retail media network space.
Why we care. The consolidation of two platforms with overlapping capabilities doesn’t make headlines for innovation. But the additive strengths LiveIntent is likely to bring to Zeta Global confirms Zeta as aiming to play with the big boys in the marketing cloud space.
About the author
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.