
Articles | December 1, 2020 | 4 min read
What Is the Zeta Marketing Platform?
When people ask us “what is the Zeta Marketing Platform?” we give them two answers:
The technical answer is, the Zeta Marketing Platform (also known as the ZMP) is a technology platform that provides clients with a real-time view of prospects and existing customers, leveraging AI to create personalization in every channel at unparalleled depth and scale.
The straight-up, plain-English answer is, the Zeta Marketing Platform is a technology platform that helps brands achieve better business outcomes.
There are four, key pillars behind the Zeta Marketing Platform:
Consisting of identities and signals drawn from across the open web.
Data-powered insights make it easier to identify valuable engagement opportunities.
Identified opportunities are used to guide the development and implementation of an activation strategy—in other words, the real-world application of data and insights to drive positive business outcomes.
Specific, measurable results as defined by each individual Zeta client.
The ZMP isn’t a stagnant entity—it’s a constantly evolving technology platform. The ZMP is continuously updated to incorporate new components and technologies that allow it to keep pace with the shifting expectations of today’s leading brands and marketers.
Inside the ZMP, the information contained within the Zeta Data Cloud (identity, cookie, and signal data) is combined with the first-party data owned by clients to obtain valuable insights. The insights are pulled out from pools of available data using a combination of resources including segmentation, forecasting, and artificial intelligence. To activate on those insights and acquire new customers for clients, the ZMP uses a combination of channels:
All of these things combine to improve acquisition, enhance retention, and drive greater growth for Zeta clients.
The ZMP sits on top of an event-driven architecture that allows for real-time data processing for clients. When it comes to integrating first-party data, the ZMP can accommodate clients in a number of ways, including:
Once the data is in the ZMP, it’s time to start gleaning insights. Specifically, insights related to intent rather than interest, because it’s knowing the intent of the consumer that allows marketers to succeed in an unprecedented way.
Three things are necessary to extract insights from data:
This is the most powerful way to identify and track portions of a client’s customer base.
Why?—Because…
ZMP is an omnichannel activation platform. It offers…
Personalized activation is really important for brands that want their message to “ring true” to a prospect or customer across channels. Within the ZMP, AI drives personalized content recommendations and personalized site optimization, by automatically finding intent so personalized messaging can be driven to the right people.
The Zeta Marketing Platform helps marketers see the outcomes of their activation strategies through reporting.
To learn more about the Zeta Marketing Platform, please contact us here.
- The technical answer
- The straight-up answer
The technical answer is, the Zeta Marketing Platform (also known as the ZMP) is a technology platform that provides clients with a real-time view of prospects and existing customers, leveraging AI to create personalization in every channel at unparalleled depth and scale.
The straight-up, plain-English answer is, the Zeta Marketing Platform is a technology platform that helps brands achieve better business outcomes.
What does the Zeta Marketing Platform consist of?
There are four, key pillars behind the Zeta Marketing Platform:
- Data
Consisting of identities and signals drawn from across the open web.
- Insights
Data-powered insights make it easier to identify valuable engagement opportunities.
- Activation
Identified opportunities are used to guide the development and implementation of an activation strategy—in other words, the real-world application of data and insights to drive positive business outcomes.
- Outcomes
Specific, measurable results as defined by each individual Zeta client.

Does the Zeta Marketing Platform grow?
The ZMP isn’t a stagnant entity—it’s a constantly evolving technology platform. The ZMP is continuously updated to incorporate new components and technologies that allow it to keep pace with the shifting expectations of today’s leading brands and marketers.
Inside the ZMP, the information contained within the Zeta Data Cloud (identity, cookie, and signal data) is combined with the first-party data owned by clients to obtain valuable insights. The insights are pulled out from pools of available data using a combination of resources including segmentation, forecasting, and artificial intelligence. To activate on those insights and acquire new customers for clients, the ZMP uses a combination of channels:
- DSP
- DCO
- Site optimization
- Social
- Acquisition email
- Email (CRM)
- Mobile
- Onsite
- In-app
All of these things combine to improve acquisition, enhance retention, and drive greater growth for Zeta clients.

First-party data and the ZMP
The ZMP sits on top of an event-driven architecture that allows for real-time data processing for clients. When it comes to integrating first-party data, the ZMP can accommodate clients in a number of ways, including:
- Robust RESTful API
- Lightweight JavaScript library
- SFTP location for batch data transfer
Insights derived from the ZMP
Once the data is in the ZMP, it’s time to start gleaning insights. Specifically, insights related to intent rather than interest, because it’s knowing the intent of the consumer that allows marketers to succeed in an unprecedented way.
Three things are necessary to extract insights from data:
- It must be possible to align the data to an individual identity (i.e. brands need to know who they’re talking to with their marketing). What makes Zeta unique here is that our data set is not probabilistic— we don’t “probably think” we’re talking to the right person. Our data set is deterministic which means we “determine and know” we’re talking to the right person.
- It must be possible to efficiently analyze the data (i.e. brands need to know how and where to talk to consumers).
- It must be possible to extract intent from the data (i.e. brands need to engage consumers at the most opportune moment). This is the most important part of making a data set effective. At Zeta, we’re confident of intent when some crosses the 70% threshold of likelihood.

Segmentation within the ZMP
This is the most powerful way to identify and track portions of a client’s customer base.
Why?—Because…
- Audience management within the ZMP is both visual and intuitive
- Tracked audiences generate events
- Tracked audiences make it possible to follow trends
- Zeta clients can match their first-party data to the Zeta Data Cloud to glean additional insights
Omnichannel activation using the ZMP
ZMP is an omnichannel activation platform. It offers…
- 1:1 activation through Experience Builder
- Batch activation through Broadcast Campaigns
- Programmatic activation through Zeta’s DSP (API’s enable activation between environments)
Personalized activation using the Zeta Marketing Platform
Personalized activation is really important for brands that want their message to “ring true” to a prospect or customer across channels. Within the ZMP, AI drives personalized content recommendations and personalized site optimization, by automatically finding intent so personalized messaging can be driven to the right people.
Achieving winning outcomes with the ZMP
The Zeta Marketing Platform helps marketers see the outcomes of their activation strategies through reporting.
- Tracked segments give marketers insight into how their audiences are trending.
- Event-driven architecture can attribute conversions back to campaigns (includes revenue and other business-oriented KPIs).
- Closes the loop back up to opportunities.
Ready to learn more about the Zeta Marketing Platform?
To learn more about the Zeta Marketing Platform, please contact us here.