The continual move towards artificial intelligence and agentic AI has created massive opportunities and wealth. It has also taken a wrecking ball to many companies, stocks and industries as their business models from even a few years ago are starting to look antiquated in the age of AI. In some cases, the stocks of those at-risk companies have been hammered despite the fact that they are still showing revenues and/or earnings growth. It’s all about the future risk!
BofA has reinstated coverage of a key winner that will win despite perceived outside risks to its business — Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA), and BofA analyst Matt Bullock is now calling for roughly 30% upside in its stock!
Zeta Global’s reinstated Buy rating from BofA comes with a $24 price objective, versus a $19.19 reference price (and $18.75 on last look). ZETA has been a massive growth engine around advertising and marketing trends in the last five years. Zeta is also expected to keep posting impressive revenue growth that should turn into real earnings over the next three years as well. While its stock peaked above $37 in late-2024, it’s now roughly half that price less than two years ago.
Why Oggonomics Cares
Oggnomics looks for opportunities in both well-known and under-followed stocks that have a chance to outperform the stock market as a whole. Typical Dow and S&P 500 stocks are usually given implied upside of 10% to 12% in new Buy ratings by major Wall Street firms. This BofA forecast is closer to 30% in implied upside for Zeta Global, and its market cap of $4.6 billion is rather small versus larger rivals and versus enterprise software giants. That may imply that there is much more risk as well… and battle-hardened investors always know that there are no assured outcomes nor any guarantees when it comes to the stock market.
At the time of this reporting and research, investors should consider that the S&P 500 was up 7.7% year-to-date and down just 2% from its recent and all-time high. Zeta Global’s performance was -8.5% YTD and down roughly 50% from its all-time high.
ZETA: Then, Now & Looking Ahead
Zeta’s omnichannel cloud platform offers consumer intelligence and marketing automation software for businesses and enterprises. Their platform allows brands to target and engage with consumers via web, email, social media, chat, and even via connected TV. It is a massive market, but, as noted above, many of the current trends pose major challenges now and looking forward due to how consumers are changing how they interact online.
The company’s Athena is said to be the first superintelligent agent built for marketers—powered by proprietary data, contextual intelligence, and seamless integration with the Zeta Marketing Platform. Zeta also has a good pedigree with co-founders David A. Steinberg (founder and CEO of InPhonic) and former Apple (AAPL) CEO John Sculley.
As fears have continued to grow around the future search being replaced by the likes of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and others, this does leave a huge question around the future of digital advertising and marketing — how will marketing efforts and advertising efforts have a voice if all the information and data are aggregated into a summary that may not even have any advertising at all? This also poses risks for Oggonomics and the countless number of websites that rely on advertising and marketing in a cycle that is facing massive disruption.
What BofA Sees…
BofA has 4 key points that are expected to drive the projected upside for Zeta investors ahead:
- Underappreciated data asset driving durable share gains
- Proprietary data shelters from AI disruption risk
- Unique positioning of platform supports expansion
- Accelerating growth/compounding FCF warrants premium
BofA’s Matt Bullock sees a mispricing of Zeta’s own business prospects in a rapidly changing market. His report from May 19, 2026 said:
Investors have miscast – and mispriced – Zeta as a cyclical digital advertising company, but we think the fundamentals point to a high-growth cash generating platform with durable advantages. Our positive view is driven by Zeta’s ability to consistently capture share of digital marketing and advertising budgets. This is enabled by its differentiated, owned data asset, which delivers measurable return on ad spend (ROAS) – the primary decision metric for marketing leaders. Organic rev growth has accelerated for four straight quarters, reaching ~29% in 1Q, while adjusted EBITDA margins are tracking above 20%, placing Zeta in a small cohort of software companies combining scale, growth, and profitability. As execution continues and investor perception shifts from “ad‑tech risk” to growth compounder, we see valuation re‑rating alongside upward earnings revisions.
BofA also noted that the additional benefits of Zeta over peers is in its own “hordes of data” that is proprietary. It claims to have some 245 million authenticated and consenting U.S. consumers, or about 95% of adults. Bullock clarifies this more detail:
Approximately 80% of Zeta’s data is sourced from owned and operated properties, insulating it from AI scraping. This hard to replicate data asset enables superior return on ad spend, supporting continued wallet‑share gains within large enterprise and agency‑managed marketing budgets.
How A.I. Itself Sees Zeta
Oggonomics went a step further or in its own direction on what Zeta looks like on a risk reward basis. According to Claude, the main three reasons behind Zeta’s underperformance and poor stock action —
- The Culper Research Short-Seller Report (November 2024) caused a 37% stock drop instantly, and despite “vigorously denied the allegations,” it created lasting reputational and sentiment damage that continued to weigh on the stock well into 2025 and 2026.
- Persistent GAAP Losses and Adtech-Sector Multiple Compression despite strong revenue growth. Additionally, there was investor skepticism whether the platform is truly a software business or a lower-multiple adtech business…
- Broader Software and AI Application Sector Selloff.
One broader issue is that the larger stock The Trade Desk (TTD) has suffered much larger losses than Zeta. Anthropic’s Claude called this connection (of TTD vs. ZETA) as being “indirect and sector-driven” rather than company-specific. In the case of Zeta, Claude pointed to Zeta’s 19 consecutive beat-and-raise quarters and 50% revenue growth in Q1-2026 a very different operational trajectory — suggesting the overlap in selling pressure is more about sector classification than shared business risk.
Revenue Growth (and Earnings) Should Keep Growing
It’s also important for investors to look backwards and ahead in their analysis. Zeta’s full-year 2022 revenue of $591 million had risen to $1.30 billion by the end of 2025, an increase of approximately 120% in just three years. The consensus revenue forecast for full-year 2026 is approximately $1.79 billion +37% YOY) and $2.08 billion for 2027 (+16% YOY).
BofA also sees positive GAAP earnings for the first year in 2026, with non-GAAP earnings of $0.95 per share and GAAP earnings of $0.06 per share. BofA’s own longer-term forecasts for 2028 are calling for $2.445 billion in revenue, with earnings estimates of $1.58 per share (non-GAAP) and $0.67 per share net (GAAP).
BofA’s Investment Rationale says:
We believe Zeta Global has the potential to be a share gainer of digital marketing and advertising spending budgets, as organizations that range from corporate clients to advertising agencies leverage Zeta Global’s proprietary customer data and its marketing and advertising technology to deliver better targeted campaigns and higher ROI. We believe the usage of Zeta Global’s platform should increase over time, driving higher revenues and increased profitability as the business scales.
Disclaimer
The data and opinions behind the reinstated Buy rating and $24 price objective are sourced from BofA. Additional data has been used from sources deemed reliable. There are no assurances of any of their forecasts nor guarantees of gains in the financial markets. Investors have to assume their own risks and all decisions should be made with the help of a financial advisor. Oggonomics assumes no responsibilities in the event of investors losing money.
