NEW YORK, May 29, 2026, 17:04 (EDT)
- Zeta Global ended Friday up 13.43% at $22.89. Trading volume topped its recent average.
- Traders cited heavy call-option buying and strength in AI-driven software stocks.
- Zeta picked up a fresh loyalty-data study it commissioned, boosting its AI marketing story.
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. rallied 13.43% to finish at $22.89 Friday after heavy buying sent the AI marketing software stock higher. Shares reached $23.03 on the day and volume hit 15.35 million, well above the 8.68 million average. Options trading pointed to investors looking for more gains.
Zeta’s in focus as traders argue about the AI trade—whether it’s going to hit old software models, or help companies with big data platforms push more product. For Zeta, that’s tied to its story as an AI marketing cloud. The company says its software can use data and machine learning to help clients target, personalize, and measure customer campaigns.
Call options were in play Friday. TipRanks said roughly 26,495 Zeta call contracts traded, with July 26 calls at $22.50 and $25 strikes seeing the most volume.
Software and AI stocks kept rising after a solid week. Reuters said Friday that all the main Wall Street indexes ended at all-time highs. The S&P software services index rose too. “There’s definitely euphoric sentiment in the market around AI,” Wells Fargo chief equity strategist Ohsung Kwon said. Reuters
Snowflake jumped. The company upped its annual revenue target and announced a $6 billion, five-year deal with Amazon Web Services. That eased some worry about AI cutting into enterprise software demand, Reuters reported.
Zeta shared some news Thursday, releasing a Forrester Consulting study it commissioned. The report said 91% of surveyed organizations run into data issues with their loyalty programs, and 92% expect to spend on tech or processes to get more out of loyalty data. CEO David A. Steinberg called loyalty data “one of the most powerful sources of intelligence” in a marketing stack. Business Wire
Zeta’s latest numbers gave another look at the business. The company said on April 30 that Q1 revenue jumped 50% from a year earlier to $396 million. Zeta also moved the midpoint of its 2026 revenue outlook up to $1.785 billion. Athena, its AI offering, generated more than seven times as many agent interactions and made up over 60% of AI platform usage during its first week after launch.
Zeta stays in a packed marketing-software field where it runs up against bigger rivals. Barron’s said this year Zeta’s AI tie-up with OpenAI is supposed to help it break out in a market that already counts Salesforce and Adobe.
The risk is the trade now looks like it’s baking in a smoother AI payoff than Zeta can guarantee each quarter. Zeta’s own filings and statements point out risks with customer retention, data, macro factors, inflation, tariffs, and whether its AI actually delivers business results.
On Friday, the stock’s move didn’t tie back to any one clear trigger. Some bullish options activity and the new loyalty-data release helped, and the market is showing more appetite for software names that prove AI is bringing in real revenue—not just hype.
