Is Zeta Global using weaselly language to play up its revenue retention expectations?
Lauren Balik has been looking into digital media company Zeta Global lately with posts about their election data and irregularities surrounding their “AI” play.
Now she’s back with an overview of how the company uses weaselly language “in order to cook revenue guidance.” She makes a very good case that the company is creatively downplaying political ad spending during an election year (because political ads are inherently cyclical revenue) and portraying it as general ad spending to juice its net revenue retention numbers.
The company is using the phrase “political candidate revenue” as a way of “rolling up advocacy revenue (PACs, special interests groups, anything not directly a politician’s campaign itself, etc.) into the ‘non-political’ line in their guidance.”
Medium - Lauren Balik How Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Cooks Revenue Guidance