Zeta Global (ZETA) S-1/AIPO registration (amended)

As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1, 2021.

Registration No. 333-255499

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

Amendment No. 3 to

FORM S-1

REGISTRATION STATEMENT

UNDER

THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933

ZETA GLOBAL HOLDINGS CORP.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

3 Park Ave, 33rd Floor

New York, NY 10016

(212) 967-5055

(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)

David A. Steinberg

Chief Executive Officer

3 Park Ave, 33rd Floor

New York, NY 10016

(212) 967-5055

(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)

Copies to:

Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to public: As soon as practicable after this Registration Statement is declared effective.

If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933, check the following box.  ☐

If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.  ☐

CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE

The Registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the Registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act, or until the registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.

The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. We and the selling stockholders may not sell these securities until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This preliminary prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities and it is not soliciting an offer to buy these securities in any state where the offer or sale is not permitted. SUBJECT TO COMPLETION. DATED JUNE 1, 2021 22,727,272 Shares Class A common stock This is Zeta Global Holdings Corp.s initial public offering. We are selling shares of our Class A common stock. The selling stockholders identified in this prospectus, which include stockholders affiliated with certain members of our board of directors, are offering 15,617,272 shares of our Class A common stock. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock by the selling stockholders. We expect the public offering price to be between $10.00 to $12.00 per share. Currently, no public market exists for our Class A common stock. After pricing of the offering, we expect that the shares of our Class A common stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol ZETA. Following this offering, we will have two classes of authorized common stock, Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights of the holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock will be identical, except with respect to voting, conversion and transfer rights. Each share of Class A common stock will be entitled to one vote per share. Each share of Class B common stock will be entitled to ten votes per share and will be convertible into one share of Class A common stock. Outstanding shares of Class B common stock will represent approximately 71.0%% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock immediately following the completion of this offering, with our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer and his affiliates holding approximately 71.0% of the voting power of our capital stock following this offering. As a result, we will be a "controlled company" within the meaning of the corporate governance standards of the NYSE. See "Prospectus Summary-The Offering-Controlled Company" We are an emerging growth company as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, have elected to avail ourselves of certain reduced public company reporting requirements for this prospectus and future filings. Investing in our Class A common stock involves risks. See the Risk Factors section beginning on page 14 of this prospectus for factors you should consider before investing in our Class A common stock. Per Share Total Public offering price $ $ Underwriting discounts and commissions(1$ $ Proceeds, before expenses, to us $ $ Proceeds, before expenses, to the selling stockholders $ $ (1) See Underwriters for additional disclosure regarding underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. At our request, the underwriters have reserved for sale, at the initial public offering price, up to 4% of the shares offered hereby for some of our directors, officers, employees, business associates and other persons who have expressed an interest in purchasing common stock in the offering. Such shares will be subject to the -day lock-up restriction described in the Underwriters section of this prospectus. To the extent that the underwriters sell more than shares of our Class A common stock, the underwriters have the option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to an additional shares of Class A common stock from us and an additional shares of our Class A common stock from the certain of selling stockholders, including certain members of our board of directors and officers, at the initial public offering price less underwriting discounts and commissions. We will not receive any proceeds from any sales of shares of our Class A common stock by the selling stockholders. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved of these securities or determined if this prospectus is truthful or complete. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense. The underwriters expect to deliver shares of our Class A common stock against payment in New York, New York on , 2021. Morgan Stanley BofA Securities Credit Suisse Barclays William Blair Needham & Company Oppenheimer & Co. Canaccord Genuity Roth Capital Partners The date of this prospectus is , 2021. 22,727,272 3,409,091

ZETA'S PLATFORM AND DATA EMPOWER MANY OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST CONSUMER BRANDS TO ACQUIRE, GROW AND RETAIN THEIR CUSTOMERS AT A LOWER COST THAN THEY CAN WITHOUT US. OUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE To empower enterprises to thrive in a digital ecosystem with intelligence, individuality and integrity. OUR FOCUS FOR TODAY To be the preferred platform for enterprises to accelerate growth and enrich the connections they have with their customers.

THE ZETA MARKETING PLATFORM DRIVES BETTER OUTCOMES Proprietary Data ZETA IDENTITY GRAPH Email Address Physical Address Digital Identifiers ZETA INTENT GRAPH Behavioral Signals Interest Frequency Location Transactions Marketing Channels PRIVACY COMPLIANT & PERSONALIZED Connected TV Display Website App Search Call Center Direct Mail SMS Video Social ACQUIRE GROW RETAIN

LEVERAGING HIGH VOLUME & HIGH FREQUENCY PROPRIETARY DATA TO CREATE HIGH VALUE AUDIENCES 220M+ Opted-ln US Individuals 1.4B Global Zeta-Owned Digital Email IDs 3B Visits To Real World Locations per Month 1T+ Digital Signals per Month Identities Globally F1OB+ Transactions Annually 2500+ Data Elements Per Individual

TABLE OF CONTENTS

We, the selling stockholders and the underwriters have not authorized anyone to provide any information or to make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectuses we have prepared or that have been prepared on our behalf, or to which we have referred you. We, the selling stockholders and the underwriters take no responsibility for, and provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. This prospectus is an offer to sell only the shares of Class A common stock offered by this prospectus, but only under circumstances and in jurisdictions where it is lawful to do so. The information contained in this prospectus is current only as of the date of this prospectus. Our business, financial condition and results of operations may have changed since such date.

For investors outside the United States (“U.S.”): Neither we, the selling stockholders nor the underwriters have done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside of the U.S. who come into possession of this prospectus must inform themselves about, and observe any restrictions relating to, the offering of the shares of Class A common stock and the distribution of this prospectus outside of the U.S.

Through and including                 , 2021 (the 25th day after the date of this prospectus), all dealers effecting transactions in these securities, whether or not participating in this offering, may be required to deliver a prospectus. This is in addition to the dealers’ obligation to deliver a prospectus when acting as underwriters and with respect to their unsold allotments or subscriptions.

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Market and Industry Data

The market data and other statistical information used throughout this prospectus is based on independent industry publications, reports by market research firms or other published independent sources. Certain market, ranking and industry data included in this prospectus, including the size of certain markets, our size or position and the positions of our competitors within these markets and our products relative to our competitors, are based on the estimates of our management. These estimates have been derived from our management’s knowledge and experience in the markets in which we operate, as well as information obtained from surveys, reports by market research firms, trade and business organizations and other contacts in the markets in which we operate. Unless otherwise noted, all of our market share and market position information presented in this prospectus is an approximation based on management’s knowledge. References herein to our being a leader in a market refer to our belief that we have a leading market-share position in each such specified market, unless the context otherwise requires. In addition, the discussion herein regarding our various markets is based on how we define the markets for our solutions.

This prospectus includes industry data that we obtained from periodic industry publications. Such data includes materials published by eMarketer, Inc. (“eMarketer”), International Data Corporation (“IDC”), Forrester Research (“Forrester”), KPMG LLP (“KPMG”), Mordor Intelligence, Inc. (“Mordor Intelligence”), PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PWC”), Walker Information (“Walker”) and the U.S. Census Bureau, information from independent industry analysts and publications, as well as our own estimates and research. Industry publications generally state that the information contained therein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but there can be no assurance as to the accuracy or completeness of included information. We have not independently verified any of the data from third-party sources, nor have we ascertained the underlying economic assumptions relied upon therein. Our estimates are derived from publicly available information released by third-party sources, as well as data from our internal research, which we believe to be reasonable. None of the independent industry publications used in this prospectus were prepared on our behalf.

Trademarks

We own or otherwise have rights to the trademarks, copyrights and service marks, including those mentioned in this prospectus, used in conjunction with the marketing and sale of our solutions. This prospectus includes trademarks, such as ZETA, DISQUS, Opportunity Explorer, ZMP, Zeta Identity Graph and Zeta Signals, which are protected under applicable intellectual property laws and are our property. This prospectus also contains trademarks, service marks, copyrights and trade names of other companies, which are the property of their respective owners. We do not intend our use or display of other companies’ trademarks, service marks, copyrights or trade names to imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by, any other companies. Solely for convenience, trademarks and tradenames referred to in this prospectus may appear without the ^® or ^™ symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights or the rights of the applicable licensor to these trademarks and tradenames.

Basis of Presentation

Unless otherwise indicated or the context otherwise requires, references herein to “Zeta,” the “Company,” “Registrant,” “we,” “us,” “our” and “our company” refer to Zeta Global Holdings Corp., a Delaware corporation, and its consolidated subsidiaries. References to the “selling stockholders” refer to the selling stockholders named in this prospectus.

Certain monetary amounts, percentages and other figures included in this prospectus have been subject to rounding adjustments. Accordingly, figures shown as totals in certain tables or charts and figures expressed as percentages in the text may not total 100% or, as applicable, when aggregated may not be the arithmetic aggregation of the numbers or percentages that precede them.

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RISK FACTORS

An investment in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully the following risks, together with our financial statements and the related notes and the other information contained in this prospectus before you decide whether to buy our Class A common stock. If any of the events contemplated by the following discussion of risks should occur, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected. As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of the money you paid to buy our Class A common stock. The risks described below are those that we believe are the material risks that we face but other risks may arise from time to time. See “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” elsewhere in this prospectus.

Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry

We may experience fluctuations in our operating results, which could make our future operating results difficult to predict.

Our quarterly and annual operating results have fluctuated in the past, and we expect our future operating results to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. Our liquidity and revenue can fluctuate quarter to quarter as certain of our customers have seasonal marketing spend. The varying nature of our pricing mix between periods, customers and products may also make it more difficult for us to forecast our future operating results. Further, these factors may make it more difficult to make comparisons between prior, current and future periods. As a result, period-to-period comparisons of our operating results should not be relied upon as an indication of our future performance.

In addition, the following factors may cause our operating results to fluctuate:

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Any one of the factors referred to above or the cumulative effect of any combination of factors referred to above may result in our operating results being below our expectations and the expectations of securities analysts and investors, or may result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual operating results, including fluctuations in our key performance indicators (“KPIs”). This variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our business plan or the expectations of securities analysts or investors for any period. In addition, a significant percentage of our operating expenses are fixed in nature in the short term and based on forecasted revenue trends. Accordingly, in the event of revenue shortfalls, we are generally unable to mitigate the negative impact on our results of operations in the short term.

If we fail to innovate and make the right investment decisions in our product offerings and platform, we may not attract and retain customers and our revenue and results of operations may decline.

Our industry is subject to rapid and frequent changes in technology, evolving customer needs and the frequent introduction by our competitors of new and enhanced offerings. We must regularly make investment decisions regarding offerings and technology to maintain the technological competitiveness of our products and platform and meet customer demand and evolving industry standards. As we continue to grow and attract a broader customer base, we will have to invest more time and effort to maintain a certain level of performance in our products and platform.

The complexity and uncertainty regarding the development of new technologies and the extent and timing of market acceptance of innovative products and solutions create difficulties in maintaining this competitiveness. The success of any enhancement or new solution depends on many factors, including timely completion, adequate quality testing, appropriate introduction and market acceptance. If our competitors are able to orientate their product to meet the specific needs of a particular industry better than us, they may be able to amass market share faster than us and by consequence, reduce our current and future revenues. Without the timely introduction of new products, solutions and enhancements, our offerings could become technologically or commercially obsolete over time, in which case our revenue and operating results would suffer. New customer demands, superior competitive offerings or new industry standards could require us to make unanticipated and costly changes to our platform or business model. If we fail to enhance our current products and solutions or fail to develop new products to adapt to our rapidly changing industry or to evolving customers’ needs, demand for our platform could decrease and our business, operating results and financial condition may be adversely affected.

Our success and revenue growth depends on our ability to add and retain scaled customers.

Our success is dependent on regularly adding new customers, in particular new scaled customers, and increasing our existing customers’ usage of our platform. We also continually work on converting our non-scaled customers into scaled customers, which represented 95%, 96% and 95% of our revenue as of March 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Many of our contracts and relationships with customers do not include automatic renewal or exclusive obligations requiring them to use our platform or maintain or increase their use of our platform. Our customers, in particular our scaled customers, typically have relationships with numerous providers and can use both our platform and those of our competitors without incurring significant costs or disruption. Our customers may also choose to decrease their overall marketing spend for any reason, including if they do not believe they are generating a sufficient return on their marketing spend. Accordingly, we must continually work to win new scaled customers and retain existing scaled customers, increase their usage of our platform and capture a larger share of their marketing spend. We may not be successful at educating and training our new and existing customers on how to use our platform, in particular our advanced reporting tools, in order for them to benefit from it and generate revenues.

In 2020, our top ten customers accounted for less than 35% of our total revenue and no customer accounted for more than 10% of our total revenue. Occasionally, we enter into separate contracts and billing relationships with individual marketing agencies that are owned by the same holding company and account for them as

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separate customers. However, if a holding company of multiple marketing agencies chooses to exert control over the individual agencies in the future and terminate their relationship with us, it could result in a disproportionate loss of revenue.

If our customers, in particular our scaled customers, decide not to continue to use our platform or decrease their usage of our platform for any reason, or if we fail to attract new customers and turn them into scaled customers, our revenue could decline, which would materially and adversely harm our business, operating results and financial condition. We cannot assure you that our scaled customers will continue to use and increase their spend on our platform or that we will be able to attract a sufficient number of new scaled customers to continue to grow our revenue. If scaled customers representing a significant portion of our business decide to materially reduce their use of our platform or cease using our platform altogether, our revenue could be significantly reduced, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. We may not be able to replace scaled customers who decrease or cease their usage of our platform with new scaled customers that will use our platform to the same extent.

If we do not manage our growth effectively, the quality of our platform and solutions may suffer, and our business, results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected.

The continued growth in our business may place demands on our infrastructure and our operational, managerial, administrative and financial resources. Our success will depend on the ability of our management to manage growth effectively. Among other things, this will require us at various times to:

If we do not manage our growth well, the efficacy and performance of our platform may suffer, which could harm our reputation and reduce demand for our platform and solutions. Failure to manage future growth effectively could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We often have long sales cycles, which can result in significant time between initial contact with a potential customer and execution of a customer agreement, making it difficult to project when, if at all, we will obtain new customers and when we will generate revenue from those customers.

As part of our sales efforts, we invest considerable time and expense evaluating the specific organizational needs of our potential customers and educating these potential customers about the technical capabilities and value of our platforms and solutions. We may spend substantial time and resources prospecting for new business or responding to requests for proposals from potential customers, and these efforts may not result in us ultimately generating any revenue from a potential customer. It is possible that we will be unable to recover any of these expenses.

Our results of operations also depend on sales to enterprise customers, which make product purchasing decisions based in part or entirely on factors, or perceived factors, not directly related to the features of our platform, including, among others, a customer’s projections of business growth, uncertainty about economic conditions (including as a result of the recent COVID-19 pandemic), capital budgets, anticipated cost savings from the implementation of our platform, potential preference for such customer’s internally-developed software solutions, perceptions about our business and platform, more favorable terms offered by potential competitors,

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and previous technology investments. As a result of these and other factors, there can be no assurance that we will be successful in making a sale to a potential customer. If our sales efforts to a potential customer do not result in sufficient revenue to justify our investments, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Our industry is intensely competitive, and if we do not effectively compete against current and future competitors, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be harmed.

Our industry is intensely competitive. To sustain and grow our revenue, we must continuously respond to the different trends driving our industry. We generally have flexible master services agreements in place with our customers. Such agreements allow our customers to change the amount of spend through our platform or terminate our services with limited notice. As a result, the introduction of new entrants or technology that are superior to or that achieve greater market acceptance than our products and solutions could negatively impact our revenue. In such an event, we may experience a reduction in market share and may have to respond by reducing our prices, resulting in lower profit margins for us.

There has also been rapid evolution and consolidation in the marketing technology industry, and we expect this trend to continue. Larger companies typically have more assets to purchase emerging companies or technologies, which gives them a competitive edge. If we are not able to effectively compete with these consolidated companies, we may not be able to maintain our market share and may experience a reduction in our revenue. Our success depends on our ability to retain key members of our management team, and on our ability to hire, train, retain and motivate new employees.

Our success depends upon the continued service of members of our senior management team and other key employees. Our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, David Steinberg, is critical to our overall management, as well as the continued development of our platform, relationships with our customers and vendors and our overall strategic direction. We do not maintain “key person” insurance for any member of our senior management team or any of our other key employees. Our senior management and key personnel are all employed on an at-will basis, which means that they could terminate their employment with us at any time, for any reason and without notice. In addition, some of our key employees may receive significant proceeds from sales of our Class A common stock after this offering, which may reduce their motivation to continue to work for us. As a result, we may be unable to retain them, which could make it difficult to operate our business, cause us to lose expertise or know-how and increase our recruitment and training costs.

Our success also depends on our ability to hire, train, retain and motivate new employees. Competition for employees in our industry can be intense, and we compete for experienced personnel with many companies that have greater resources than we have. The market for engineering talent is particularly intense in New York, where we are headquartered and in the San Francisco Bay Area, the EU and India where we have offices. Our future growth will also depend in part on our ability to establish sales teams that effectively solve problems and efficiently execute our objectives. We will need to establish teams that are well versed in complex and varied systems of distribution across national, regional and international markets. We believe that there is significant competition for sales personnel with the sales skills and technical knowledge that we require. Our ability to achieve growth in revenue in the future will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training and retaining sufficient numbers of sales personnel with relevant industry knowledge and strong selling skills.

We believe our corporate culture has been critical to our success and we plan to invest substantial time and resources to continue building it. In particular, Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (“DEI”) is a strategic imperative at Zeta. Our DEI team is focused on driving inclusiveness, innovation and stronger business results by attracting a more diverse talent pool and creating a more inclusive work environment for all our employees around the world. Although we have adopted policies to promote compliance with laws and regulations as well as to foster a respectful workplace for all employees, our employees may fail to abide by these policies. In addition to damaging our reputation, actual or alleged misconduct could affect the confidence of our shareholders, regulators and other parties and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

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We are subject to payment-related risks if customers dispute or do not pay their invoices, and any decreases or significant delays in payments could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. These risks may be heightened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn.

We may become involved in disputes with our customers over the operation of our platform, the terms of our agreements or our billings for purchases made by them through our platform. In the past, certain customers have sought to slow their payments to us or been forced into filing for bankruptcy protection, resulting in delay or cancelation of their pending payments to us. These challenges have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic impact, and a number of our customers are experiencing financial difficulties and liquidity constraints. In certain cases, customers have been unable to timely make payments, and we have suffered losses. Certain of our contracts with marketing agencies state that if their customer does not pay the agency, the agency is not liable to us, and we must seek payment solely from their customer, a type of arrangement called sequential liability. Contracting with these agencies, which in some cases have or may develop higher-risk credit profiles, may subject us to greater credit risk than if we were to contract directly with the customer.

If we are unable to collect customers’ fees on a timely basis or at all, we could incur write-offs for bad debt, which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations for the periods in which the write-offs occur. In the future, bad debt may exceed reserves for such contingencies, and our bad debt exposure may increase over time. Any increase in write-offs for bad debt could have a materially negative effect on our business, financial condition and operating results. Even if we are not paid by our customers on time or at all, we may still be obligated to pay for the inventory we have purchased for our customers’ marketing campaigns, and consequently, our results of operations and financial condition would be adversely impacted.

Future acquisitions or strategic investments could be difficult to identify and integrate, divert the attention of management and could disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value and adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

As part of our growth strategy, we may acquire or invest in other businesses, assets or technologies that are complementary to and fit within our strategic goals. Acquisitions are inherently risky and if they fail, they can result in necessary costly remediating steps such as litigation and divesture. Any acquisition or investment may divert the attention of management and require us to use significant amounts of cash, issue dilutive equity securities or incur debt. The anticipated benefits of any acquisition or investment may not be realized, and we may be exposed to unknown risks, any of which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition, including risks arising from:

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To fund future acquisitions, we may pay cash, which would diminish our cash reserves, or issue additional shares of our Class A common stock, which could dilute your investment in our company. Borrowing to fund an acquisition would result in increased fixed obligations and could also subject us to covenants or other restrictions that could limit our ability to effectively run our business.

Our international operations subject us to additional costs and risks, and may not yield returns, and our continued international expansion may not be successful.

We have entered into several international markets and expect to enter into additional markets in the future. For the years ended December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, we generated approximately 7% and 5% of our revenue, respectively, from outside the U.S. For the three months ended March 31, 2021 and March 31, 2020, we generated approximately 8% of our revenue from outside the U.S. We expect to continue to expand our international operations, which may require significant management attention and financial resources and may place burdens on our management, administrative, operational, legal and financial infrastructure. The costs and risks inherent in conducting business internationally include:

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As we continue to expand our business globally, our success will depend, in large part, on our ability to anticipate and effectively manage these risks. These factors and others could harm our ability to increase international revenues and, consequently, could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The expansion of our existing international operations and entry into additional international markets will require significant management attention and financial resources. Our failure to manage these risks successfully could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our use and reliance upon technology and development resources in India may expose us to unanticipated costs and liabilities, which could affect our ability to realize cost savings from our technology operations in India and other non-U.S. locations.

We conduct a significant amount of our technology and product development work in India and other global locations. We cannot assure you that our reliance upon development resources in India and other non-U.S. locations will enable us to achieve meaningful cost reductions or greater resource efficiency. Further, our operations in India involve significant risks, including:

The enforcement of intellectual property rights and confidentiality protections in India may not be as effective as in the U.S. or other countries. Policing unauthorized use of proprietary technology is difficult and expensive and we might need to resort to litigation to protect our trade secrets and confidential information. The experience and capabilities of Indian courts in handling intellectual property litigation vary, and outcomes are unpredictable. Further, such litigation may require significant expenditure of cash and management efforts and could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. An adverse determination in any such litigation will impair our intellectual property rights and may harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We expect to continue to rely on significant cost savings obtained by concentrating our technology and development and engineering work in India and other non-U.S. locations, but difficulties resulting from the factors noted above and other risks related to our operations in India or such other non-U.S. locations could increase our expenses and harm our competitive position. The historical rate of wage inflation has been higher in India than in the U.S. In addition, if the Rupee strengthens against the U.S. Dollar, our costs would increase. If the cost of technology and development work in India significantly increases or the labor environment in India changes unfavorably, our cost savings may be diminished. Any such developments could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our business is subject to the risk of catastrophic events such as pandemics, earthquakes, flooding, fire and power outages, and to interruption by man-made problems such as terrorism.

Our business is vulnerable to damage or interruption from pandemics, earthquakes, extreme weather events, flooding, fire, power outages, telecommunications failures, terrorist attacks, acts of war, human errors, break-ins and similar events. A significant natural disaster could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition, and our insurance coverage may be insufficient to compensate us for losses that we may incur. As we rely heavily on our data center facilities, computer and communications systems and the Internet to conduct our business and provide high-quality customer service, these disruptions could

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negatively impact our ability to run our business and either directly or indirectly disrupt publishers’ and partners’ businesses, which could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic, including the reactions of governments, markets and the general public, has resulted in a number of adverse consequences for our business, results of operations and financial condition, many of which are beyond our control. These impacts to our business, in addition to the impacts felt by the global economy, have yet to be fully realized. Future actions taken by governmental bodies, regulatory authorities and other third parties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are highly uncertain in both scope and impact, and the negative effects of such actions may exacerbate the other risks mentioned in this section.

We may need additional capital in the future to meet our financial obligations and to pursue our business objectives. Additional capital may not be available on favorable terms, or at all, which could compromise our ability to meet our financial obligations and grow our business.

We may need to raise additional capital to fund operations in the future or to finance acquisitions or other business objectives. Such additional capital may not be available on favorable terms or at all. Lack of sufficient capital resources could significantly limit our ability to meet our financial obligations or to take advantage of business and strategic opportunities. Any additional capital raised through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities would dilute your stock ownership, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. Any debt financing we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, we may be required to delay, reduce the scope of, or eliminate material parts of our business strategy, including potential additional acquisitions or development of new technologies and geographic expansion.

Our loan agreement contains operating and financial covenants that may restrict our business and financing activities.

As of the date hereof, we had $185.0 million outstanding under our loan and security agreement (“Senior Secured Credit Facility”) with Bank of America, N.A., dated February 3, 2021. Borrowings under this agreement are secured by substantially all of our assets. For more information on our outstanding long-term borrowing, see Note 22 to our consolidated financial statements. This Senior Secured Credit Facility also restricts our ability, without the lender’s written consent, to, among other things:

In addition, our Senior Secured Credit Facility contains customary minimum quarterly financial maintenance covenants.

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The operating and financial restrictions and covenants in the Senior Secured Credit Facility, as well as any future financing arrangements that we may enter into, may restrict our ability to finance our operations, engage in, expand, or otherwise pursue our business activities and strategies. Our ability to comply with these or other covenants may be affected by events beyond our control, and future breaches of these or other covenants could result in a default under the Senior Secured Credit Facility. If not waived, future defaults could cause all of the outstanding indebtedness under the Senior Secured Credit Facility to become immediately due and payable and our access to further credit under the Senior Secured Credit Facility may terminate. If we do not have or are unable to generate sufficient cash to repay our debt obligations when they become due and payable, either upon maturity or in the event of a default, we would be required to obtain additional debt or equity financing, which may not be available on favorable terms, or at all, which may negatively impact our ability to operate and continue our business as a going concern.

Our tax liabilities may be greater than anticipated.

The U.S. and non-U.S. tax laws applicable to our business activities are subject to interpretation and are changing. We are subject to audit by the Internal Revenue Service and by taxing authorities of the state, local and foreign jurisdictions in which we operate. Our tax obligations are based in part on our corporate operating structure, including the manner in which we develop, value, use and hold our intellectual property, the jurisdictions in which we operate, how tax authorities assess revenue-based taxes such as sales and use taxes, the scope of our international operations, and the value we ascribe to our intercompany transactions. Taxing authorities may challenge, our tax positions and methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, positions regarding the collection of sales and use taxes, and the jurisdictions in which we are subject to taxes, which could expose us to additional taxes. Any adverse outcomes of such challenges to our tax positions could result in additional taxes for prior periods, interest and penalties, as well as higher future taxes. In addition, our future tax expense could increase as a result of changes in tax laws, regulations or accounting principles, or as a result of earning income in jurisdictions that have higher tax rates. Moreover, the determination of our provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant estimates and judgment by management, and the tax treatment of certain transactions is uncertain. Any changes, ambiguity, or uncertainty in taxing jurisdictions’ administrative interpretations, decisions, policies and positions, including the position of taxing authorities with respect to revenue generated by reference to certain digital services, could also materially impact our income tax liabilities. Although we believe we will make reasonable estimates and judgments, the ultimate outcome of any particular issue may differ from the amounts previously recorded in our financial statements and any such occurrence could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.

We have incurred substantial net operating losses (“NOLs”) during our history. Under the rules of Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” generally defined as a greater than 50 percentage point change (by value) in its equity ownership over a rolling three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change NOLs and other pre-change tax attributes to offset its post-change taxable income may be limited. The applicable rules generally operate by focusing on changes in ownership among stockholders considered by the rules as owning, directly or indirectly, 5% or more of the stock of a corporation, as well as changes in ownership arising from new issuances of stock by the corporation. If finalized, Treasury Regulations currently proposed under Section 382 of the Code may further limit our ability to utilize our pre-change NOLs or other pre-change tax attributes if we undergo a future ownership change. We may have experienced ownership changes in the past and could experience one or more ownership changes in the future, including in connection with this offering and as a result of future changes in our stock ownership, some of which changes may be outside our control. Similar provisions of state tax law may also apply to our state NOLs. As a result, if we earn net taxable income, our ability to use our pre-change NOL carryforwards to offset post-change taxable income may be subject to limitations. For these reasons, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of our NOLs and other tax attributes, which could adversely affect our future cash flows.

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Changes in the method pursuant to which the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”), is determined and the transition to other benchmarks may adversely affect our results of operations.

LIBOR and certain other “benchmarks” have been the subject of continuing national, international and other regulatory guidance and proposals for reform. These reforms may cause such benchmarks to perform differently than in the past or have other consequences which cannot be predicted. In July 2017, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates LIBOR, publicly announced that it intends to stop persuading or compelling banks to submit LIBOR rates after 2021. To identify a successor rate for U.S. dollar LIBOR, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (“ARRC”), a U.S. based group convened by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was formed. The ARRC is comprised of a diverse set of private sector entities and a wide array of official-sector entities, banking regulators, and other financial sector regulators. The ARRC has identified the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (“SOFR”), as its preferred alternative rate for LIBOR. SOFR is a measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight, collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities, and is based on directly observable U.S. Treasury-backed repurchase transactions. Financial regulators in the UK, the EU, Japan and Switzerland have also formed working groups with the aim of recommending alternatives to LIBOR denominated in their local currencies. Although SOFR appears to be the preferred replacement rate for U.S. dollar LIBOR, it is unclear if other benchmarks may emerge or if other rates will be adopted outside of the United States.

Borrowings under certain of our funding arrangements bear an interest rate based on certain tenors of LIBOR. Uncertainty regarding the continued use and reliability of LIBOR as a benchmark interest rate could adversely affect the performance of LIBOR relative to its historic values. Even if financial instruments are transitioned to alternative benchmarks, such as SOFR, successfully, the new benchmarks are likely to differ from LIBOR, and our interest expense associated with our outstanding indebtedness or any future indebtedness we incur may increase. Further, transitioning to an alternative benchmark rate, such as SOFR, may result in us incurring significant expense and legal risks, as renegotiation and changes to documentation may be required in effecting the transition. Any alternative benchmark rate may be calculated differently than LIBOR and may increase the interest expense associated with our existing or future indebtedness.

Any of these occurrences could materially and adversely affect our borrowing costs, financial condition, and results of operations.

Risks Related to Data Security and Intellectual Property

Our business and the effectiveness of our platform depends on our ability to collect and use online data. New tools used by consumers to limit data collection, regulatory restrictions and potential changes to web browsers and mobile operating systems affect our ability to collect such data, which could harm our operating results and financial condition.

We have one of the largest compilations of personal data relating to U.S. and international consumers in the world. The ability of our platform to deliver high quality solutions to our customers is based on our technology’s capability to derive relevant, actionable insights from the data that we ingest into our systems and our ability to execute marketing programs across digital channels such as email, social media, website and other touchpoints to engage consumers. The principal way that we collect individual opted-in data is directly from the consumers when they register with our platform, such as the Disqus commenting system, or partners’ services. We also use various tracking technologies, both proprietary and those provided through third-party suppliers in order to connect to individuals across marketing channels for the purpose of targeting consumers and delivering campaigns. The future of these and other digital data collection practices is evolving, with some prominent companies in the industry recently announcing that they will implement their own individual data collection tools and phase out others. This approach may or may not be compatible with our current operations in those channels and platforms. It is yet to be determined if there will be an industry-wide framework for targeting consumers in a digital environment. Furthermore, regulatory and legislative actions may influence which data collection tools

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are permitted in various jurisdictions and may further restrict our data collection efforts. Without this incremental data, we may not have sufficient insight into the consumer’s activity to provide some of our current tools, which may impact our capacity to execute our customers’ programs efficiently and effectively.

Consumers can, with increasing ease, implement technologies that limit our ability to collect and use data to track and deliver our solutions across different marketing channels and platforms. Various digital tracking tools may be deleted or blocked by consumers. The most commonly used internet browsers also allow consumers to modify their browser settings to block first-party cookies (placed directly by the publisher or website owner that the consumer intends to interact with), which are not affected by changes from web browsers and operating systems, or third-party cookies (placed by parties that do not have direct relationship with the consumer), which some browsers may block by default. Mobile devices using Android and iOS operating systems limit the ability of cookies, or similar technology, to track consumers while they are using applications other than their web browser on the device. Even if cookies and ad blockers do not ultimately have an adverse effect on our business, investor concerns about the utility and robustness of these tracking technologies could limit demand for our stock and cause its price to decline.

We also partner with third-party data suppliers and publishers. When we purchase or license from third-party data suppliers, we are dependent upon our ability to obtain such data on commercially reasonable terms and in compliance with applicable regulations. If a substantial number of data suppliers were to withdraw or withhold their data from us, or if we had to terminate our ties with data suppliers either due to commercial or regulatory reasons, our ability to provide products to our customers could be materially adversely impacted, which could result in decreased revenues and operating results. We cannot provide assurance that we will be successful in maintaining our relationships with these external data source providers or that we will be able to continue to obtain data from them on acceptable terms or at all. Furthermore, we cannot provide assurance that we will be able to obtain data from alternative sources if our current sources become unavailable.

The standards that private entities and inbox service providers adopt in the future to regulate the use and delivery of email may interfere with the effectiveness of our platform and our ability to conduct business.

Our business is dependent on email services for promoting our customers’ brands, products and services. Other private entities often advocate standards of conduct or practices that significantly exceed current legal requirements and classify certain solicitations that comply with current legal requirements as impermissible “spam.” Some of these entities maintain “blacklists” of companies and individuals, and the websites, inbox service providers and IP addresses associated with those entities or individuals that do not adhere to those standards of conduct or practices for commercial solicitations that the blacklisting entity believes are appropriate. If a company’s IP addresses are listed by a blacklisting entity, emails sent from those addresses may be blocked if they are sent to any internet domain or internet address that subscribes to the blacklisting entity’s service or uses its blacklist.

From time to time, some of our IP addresses have become, and we expect will continue to be, listed with one or more blacklisting entities due to the messaging practices of our customers and other users. We may be at an increased risk of having our IP addresses blacklisted due to our scale and volume of emails processed, compared to our smaller competitors. While the overall percentage of such email solicitations that our individual customers send may be at or below reasonable standards, the total aggregate number of all emails that we process on behalf of our customers may trigger increased scrutiny from these blacklisting entities. There can be no guarantee that we will be able to successfully remove ourselves from those lists. Because we fulfill email delivery on behalf of our customers, blacklisting of this type could undermine the effectiveness of our customers’ transactional email, email marketing programs and other email communications, all of which could have a material negative impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Inbox service providers can also block emails from reaching their users. While we continually improve our own technology and work closely with inbox service providers to maintain our deliverability rates, the

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implementation of new or more restrictive policies by inbox service providers may make it more difficult to deliver our customers’ emails, particularly if we are not given adequate notice of a change in policy or struggle to update our platform to comply with the changed policy in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, some inbox service providers categorize as “promotional” emails that originate from email service providers and, as a result, direct them to an alternate or “tabbed” section of the recipient’s inbox. If inbox service providers materially limit or halt the delivery of our customers’ emails, or if we fail to deliver our customers’ emails in a manner compatible with inbox service providers’ email handling or authentication technologies or other policies, or if the open rates of our customers’ emails are negatively impacted by the actions of inbox service providers to categorize emails, then customers may question the effectiveness of our platform and cancel their accounts.

Additionally, changes in the laws or regulations that limit our ability to send such communications or impose additional requirements upon us in connection with sending such communications would also materially adversely impact our business. For example, electronic marketing and privacy requirements in the EU are highly restrictive and differ greatly from those currently in force in the U.S. which could cause fewer individuals in the EU to subscribe to our marketing messages and drive up our costs and risk of regulatory oversight and fines if we are found to be non-compliant. These restrictions could prevent us from obtaining enough data to produce effective marketing results for our customers in these markets. Our use of email and other messaging services to send communications to consumers may also result in legal claims against us, for which we may incur increased expenses, and if successful might result in fines and orders with costly reporting and compliance obligations or might limit or prohibit our ability to send emails or other messages. We also rely on social networking messaging services to send communications and to encourage consumers to send communications. Changes to the terms of these social networking services to limit promotional communications, any restrictions that would limit our ability or our customers’ ability to send communications through their services, disruptions or downtime experienced by these social networking services or decline in the use of or engagement with social networking services by our customers’ end consumers could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.

If we fail to detect or prevent fraud or malware intrusion on our platform, devices, or systems, or into the systems or devices of our customers and their consumers, publishers could lose confidence in our platform, and we could face legal claims, any of which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We may be the target of fraudulent or malicious activities undertaken by persons seeking to use our platform for improper purposes. For example, someone may attempt to divert or artificially inflate customer purchases through our platform, or to disrupt or divert the operation of the systems, and devices of our publishers, and their consumers in order to misappropriate information, generate fraudulent billings or stage cyberattacks, or for other unauthorized or illicit purposes. Those activities could also introduce malware through our platform in order to commandeer or gain access to confidential information or personal information. We use third-party tools and proprietary technology to identify non-human traffic and malware, and we may reduce or terminate relationships with customers that we find to be engaging in such activities. Perpetrators of fraudulent impressions and malware frequently change their tactics and may become more sophisticated over time, requiring both us and third parties to improve processes for assessing the quality of publisher inventory and controlling fraudulent activity. In the meantime, new or changing data privacy laws (in particular outside the U.S.) could potentially interfere with the data collection required in order to detect fraud. If we fail to detect or prevent fraudulent or malicious activity of this sort, our reputation could be damaged, customers may contest payment, demand refunds or fail to give us future business, or we could face legal claims from customers. Even if we are not directly involved in fraud or malicious activity, any sustained failures of others in our industry to adequately detect and prevent fraud could generate the perception that digital marketing is unsafe and lead our customers to avoid digital marketing products like ours.

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A significant inadvertent disclosure or breach of confidential and/or personal information we process, or a security breach of our or our customers’, suppliers’, or other partners’ computer systems could be detrimental to our business, reputation, financial performance and results of operations.

The nature of our business means that we process large databases of personal information, including maintaining and storing large databases of such information, not only on our own behalf, but also on our customers’ and others’ behalf. As a result, we face heightened risk of suffering cyber-related harm such as a data breach or data being misappropriated by a malicious insider or unauthorized party. Such parties could attempt to gain entry to our systems (including by gaining employment at Zeta) for the purpose of stealing data, including confidential information or personal information, or breaching our security systems. In particular, we, like other organizations, especially in the digital marketing industry and marketing technology industry, are routinely subject to attempts by such third parties (e.g., cybersecurity threats, attempted data privacy breaches, or other incidents), which if successful, may result in either threatened or actual exposure leading to unauthorized access, disclosure and misuse of confidential information, personal information or other information regarding customers, suppliers, partners, vendors, employees, or our company and business. Even where we have invested in industry standard security, a breach may be due to employee error, malfeasance, system errors or vulnerabilities, including vulnerabilities of our customers, vendors, suppliers, their products, or otherwise. Third parties may also attempt to fraudulently induce employees to disclose sensitive information through a process known as social engineering. This includes disclosing data such as usernames, passwords or other information to gain access to our customers’ data or our data, including intellectual property and other confidential information. Techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, or sabotage IT systems, change frequently, grow more complex over time, and often are not recognized until launched against a target Given the unpredictability of the timing, nature and scope of cybersecurity attacks and other security-related incidents, our technology may fail to adequately secure the data, including confidential information and personal information we maintain, and we cannot entirely eliminate the risk of improper or unauthorized access to or disclosure of such data, other security events that impact the integrity or availability of such data, or our systems and operations and any data contained in such systems and operations. We may incur significant costs in protecting against or remediating such events, including cyber-attacks. Any security breach could result in operational disruptions that impair our ability to meet our customer’s requirements, which could result in decreased revenue. We carry insurance comparable to our industry. However, we cannot guarantee that our insurance coverage will be sufficient to cover all losses.

Whether there is an actual or a perceived breach of our security, our reputation could suffer irreparable harm, causing our current and prospective customers to reject our products in the future, deterring data suppliers from supplying us data or customers from uploading their data on our platform, or changing customers’ behaviors and use of our technology. Further, we could be forced to expend significant resources in response to a security breach, including those expended in notifying individuals and providing mitigating solutions, repairing system damage, increasing cyber security protection costs by deploying additional personnel and protection technologies, and litigating and resolving legal claims or governmental inquiries and investigations, all of which could divert the attention of our management and key personnel away from our business operations.

We depend on third-party data centers, systems and technologies to operate our business, the disruption of which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We rely on data centers and third-party technology vendors in order to operate our business. Any damage to or failure of our systems generally would prevent us from operating our business. We host our company-owned infrastructure at third-party data centers. We are also dependent on third-party providers to provide industry standard protection against potential damages such as cyber intrusions, natural disasters, criminal acts and technical maintenance. In the event of damage or interruption, it is unlikely that we would be appropriately compensated for the reputational harm that such an interruption would create regardless of any damages we may recover from such third parties or any insurance policy in place. This would in turn reduce our revenue, subject us to liability and may cause us to lose customers, any of which could materially adversely affect our business.

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Additionally, improving our platform’s infrastructure and expanding its capacity in anticipation of growth in new channels and formats, as well as implementing technological enhancements to our platform to improve its efficiency and cost-effectiveness are key components of our business strategy, and if our third-party data centers are unable to keep up with our growing needs for capacity, this could have an adverse effect on our business. Any changes in the service levels at our third-party data centers or any errors, service interruptions, defects, disruptions, or other performance problems could adversely affect our reputation, expose us to liability, cause us to lose customers, or otherwise adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We also rely on computer hardware purchased or leased from, software licensed from, content licensed from and services provided by a variety of third parties, which include databases, operating systems, virtualization software, tax requirement content and geolocation content and services. Any errors, bugs or defects in such third-party hardware, software, content or services could result in errors or a failure of our solutions, which could harm our business. Additionally, we cannot assure you that these third-party leases or licenses, or support for such leased or licensed products and technologies, will continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. We cannot be certain that our suppliers or licensors are not infringing the intellectual property rights of others or that our suppliers and licensors have sufficient rights to the technology in all jurisdictions in which we may operate. In the future, we might need to license other hardware, software, content or services to enhance our products and meet evolving customer requirements. Any inability to license or otherwise obtain such hardware or software could result in a reduction in functionality, or errors or failures of our products, until equivalent technology is either developed by us or, if available, is identified, obtained through purchase or license, and integrated into our solutions, any of which may reduce demand for our solutions and increase our expenses. In addition, third-party licenses may expose us to increased risks, including risks associated with the integration of new technology, the diversion of resources from the development of our own proprietary technology, and our inability to generate revenue from new technology sufficient to offset associated acquisition and maintenance costs, all of which may increase our expenses and harm our results of operations.

Our intellectual property rights may be difficult to enforce and protect, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our technology without compensating us, thereby eroding our competitive advantage and having an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our technology without compensating us, thereby eroding our competitive advantage and harming our business. Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect proprietary methods and technologies that we develop or otherwise acquire, so that we can prevent others from using our inventions and proprietary information. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors might gain access to our technology and our business might be adversely affected.

Policing unauthorized use of our technology is difficult. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those of the U.S., and mechanisms for enforcement of our proprietary rights in such countries may be inadequate. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including in particular, the proprietary aspects of our platform) we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who have not incurred the same level of expense, time and effort to create and protect their intellectual property.

We rely upon a combination of trade secrets, third-party confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, additional contractual restrictions on disclosure and use, and trademark, copyright, patent and other intellectual property laws to establish and protect our proprietary technology and intellectual property rights. Establishing trade secret, copyright, trademark, domain name and patent protection can be difficult and expensive, and the laws, procedures and restrictions may provide only limited protection. It may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy or reverse engineer aspects of our technology or otherwise obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary, or to develop technologies similar or superior to our technology or design around our proprietary rights, despite the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary rights. Our contracts with our

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employees and contractors that relate to intellectual property issues generally restrict the use of our confidential information solely in connection with our products. However, theft or misuse of our proprietary information could occur by employees or contractors who have access to our technology.

While we have issued patents and have patent applications pending, we may be unable to obtain patent protection for the technology covered in our patent applications or such patent protection may not be obtained quickly enough to meet our business needs. Furthermore, the patent prosecution process is expensive, time-consuming and complex, and we may not be able to prepare, file, prosecute, maintain and enforce all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. The scope of patent protection also can be reinterpreted after issuance and issued patents may be invalidated. Even if our patent applications do issue as patents, they may not issue in a form that is sufficiently broad to protect our technology, prevent competitors or other third parties from competing with us or otherwise provide us with any competitive advantage.

We currently own trademark registrations and applications for the ZETA and DISQUS names and variants thereof and other product-related marks in the United States and certain foreign countries. We have also registered numerous internet domain names related to our business. We also rely on copyright laws to protect computer programs related to our platform and our proprietary technologies.

We may be subject to intellectual property rights claims by third parties, which are costly to defend, could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use technology or intellectual property.

We operate in an industry with an extensive history of intellectual property litigation. There is a risk that our business, platform and solutions may infringe or be alleged to infringe the trademarks, copyrights, patents and other intellectual property rights of third parties, including patents held by our competitors or by non-practicing entities. We may also face allegations that our employees have misappropriated or divulged the intellectual property of their former employers or other third parties. Regardless of whether claims that we are infringing patents or other intellectual property rights have any merit, evaluating and defending these claims is costly, time consuming, and diverts management attention and financial resources. Some of our competitors have substantially greater resources than we do and are able to sustain the cost of complex intellectual property litigation to a greater extent and for longer periods of time than we could. Results of these litigation matters are difficult to predict and we may not be successful in defending ourselves in such matters which may require us to stop offering some features, purchase licenses, which may not be available on favorable terms or at all, or modify our technology or our platform while we develop non-infringing substitutes, or incur significant settlement costs. Additionally, we may be obligated to indemnify our customers or inventory and data suppliers in connection with any such litigation. Any of these events could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our failure to meet content and inventory standards and provide products that our customers and third-party suppliers trust, could harm our brand and reputation and negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition.

We do not provide or control either the content of the advertisements we serve or that of the websites providing the inventory. Our customers provide the content and third-party suppliers provide the inventory. Both marketers and third-party suppliers are concerned about being associated with content they consider inappropriate, competitive or inconsistent with their brands, or illegal and they are hesitant to spend money without guaranteed brand security. Additionally, our customers may seek to display marketing campaigns in jurisdictions that do not permit such campaigns. Our customers and third-party suppliers will often include provisions in their contracts that marketing campaigns cannot run certain content. Inadvertently, we may serve such ad content, or the advertisements may contain malware, which could harm our or our customers’ brand and reputation, harm our relationships with our inventory suppliers and negatively impact our business, financial condition and operating results. Accordingly, a part of our business strategy is our ability to convince our customers that their brand and image are safe within our ecosystem. While we have established rules and

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guidance on how our software is to be used, including prohibiting displaying content that is illegal, and also run third party software that looks for malware in all of our marketing campaigns, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to capture all violating media before it is posted. It is therefore possible that our customer may run a campaign that does not conform to our standards. If this were to happen, we would be liable to the customer and would likely have to invest in remediating the issue. Further, if this were to happen it would harm our or our customers’ brand and reputation, and negatively impact our business, financial condition and operating results.

Additionally, marketing may result in litigation relating to copyright or trademark infringement, public performance royalties or other claims based on the nature and content of advertising that is distributed through our platform. Though we contractually require our customers to represent to us that they have the rights necessary to serve advertisements through our platform, we do not independently verify whether we are permitted to deliver, or review the content of, such advertisements. If any of these representations are untrue, we may be exposed to potential liability and our reputation may be damaged. While our customers are typically obligated to indemnify us, such indemnification may not fully cover us, or we may not be able to collect. In addition to settlement costs, we may be responsible for our own litigation costs, which can be extensive.

Our platform relies on third-party open source software components. Failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could expose us to liabilities, and the combination of open source software with code that we develop could compromise the proprietary nature of our platform.

Our platform utilizes software licensed to us by third-party authors under “open source” licenses and we expect to continue to utilize open source software in the future. The use of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. To the extent that our platform depends upon the successful operation of the open source software we use, any undetected errors or defects in this open source software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our platform, delay new solution introductions, result in a failure of our platform and injure our reputation. For example, undetected errors or defects in open source software could render it vulnerable to breaches or security attacks, and, in conjunction, make our systems more vulnerable to data breaches.

Furthermore, some open source licenses require the release of proprietary source code combined with, linked to or distributed with such open source software to be released to the public. If we combine, link or distribute our proprietary software with open source software in a specific manner, we could, under some open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar solutions with lower development effort and time and ultimately put us at a competitive disadvantage.

Although we monitor our use of open source software to avoid subjecting our platform to conditions we do not intend, we cannot assure you that our processes for controlling our use of open source software in our platform will be effective. If we are held to have breached the terms of an open source software license, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties to continue operating using our solution on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our solution or the supporting computational infrastructure to discontinue use of code, or to make generally available, in source code form, portions of our proprietary code.

Any unfavorable publicity or negative public perception of current data collection practices could result in additional regulations which may impact the effectiveness of our data cloud and platform.

The growth of the digital marketing industry has led to increased scrutiny from consumer groups, government agencies and news organizations. Any future negative publicity about the digital marketing industry as a whole or about an individual actor could result in government agencies playing a more active role in regulating and enforcing rules that relate to the collection, use, sharing and disclosure of data.

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For example, in recent years, consumer advocates, mainstream media and elected officials have increasingly and publicly criticized the digital marketing industry for its collection, storage and use of data.

As we process transactions through our platform, we collect large amounts of data about consumers and advertisements that we place. We collect data on ad specifications (such as placement, size and format) pricing and auction activity (such as price floors, bid response behavior and clearing prices). Further, we collect data on consumers that does not directly identify the individual (although considered personal information under the CCPA, California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), GDPR, and other laws), including browser, device location and characteristics, online browsing behavior, exposure to and interaction with advertisements, and inferential data about purchase intentions and preferences. Data providers also send us proprietary data, including data about consumers. We aggregate this data and analyze it in order to enhance our product, including the pricing, placement and scheduling of advertisements. Evolving regulatory standards could place restrictions on the collection, management, aggregation and use of the types of data we collect, which could result in a material increase in the cost of collecting or otherwise obtaining certain kinds of data and could limit the ways in which we may use or disclose data. In addition, regulations such as the GDPR permit data protection authorities to impose penalties for violations. For example, we recently received a notice from Norwegian authorities of an intent to impose a fine for our alleged failure to adhere to the GDPR in their country. While we are disputing the allegation, if the Norwegian authorities determine we violated the GDPR, we may be subject to penalties and litigation and our business and reputation may be harmed. Any new and unforeseen regulatory limitations on our operations could impair our ability to deliver effective solutions to our customers, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Risks Related to Regulatory Compliance

We are subject to anti-bribery, anti-corruption and similar laws and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal penalties or significant fines and harm our business and reputation.

We are subject to anti-bribery and similar laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (“FCPA”), the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. Travel Act, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 and Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and possibly other anti-corruption, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption laws have been enforced with great rigor in recent years and are interpreted broadly in prohibiting companies and their employees and their agents from making or offering improper payments or other benefits to government officials and others in the private sector. The FCPA or other applicable anti-corruption laws may also hold us liable for acts of corruption or bribery committed by our third-party business partners, representatives and agents, even if we do not authorize such activities. As we increase our international sales and business, and increase our use of third parties, our risks under these laws will increase. As a public company, the FCPA separately requires that we keep accurate books and records and maintain internal accounting controls sufficient to assure management’s control, authority and responsibility over our assets. We have adopted policies and procedures and conduct training designed to prevent improper payments and other corrupt practices prohibited by applicable laws, but cannot guarantee that improprieties will not occur. Noncompliance with these laws could subject us to investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, suspension and/or debarment from contracting with specified persons, the loss of export privileges, reputational harm, adverse media coverage and other collateral consequences. Any investigations, actions and/or sanctions could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

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Changes in legislative, judicial, regulatory or cultural environments relating to information collection, use and processing may limit our ability to collect, use and process data, including personal information. Such developments could cause revenue to decline, increase the cost of data, reduce the availability of data and adversely affect the demand for our products and solutions.

We receive, store and process personal information from and about consumers in addition to personal information and other data from and about our customers, employees and service providers. Our processing of such data is subject to a wide variety of federal, state and foreign laws and regulations and is subject to regulation by various U.S. and other government authorities and consumer actions. Our data processing is also subject to contractual obligations and we participate in private self-regulatory programs in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The U.S. and international jurisdictions continue to establish new legislation, legal and compliance requirements and frameworks regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of data, including personal information (including establishing new and more comprehensive rights for individuals); additional U.S. state laws are likely, as well as U.S. federal legislation. Additionally, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, many state attorneys general, and many courts are interpreting existing federal and state consumer protection laws as imposing standards for the collection, disclosure, process, use, storage and security of data, including personal information. The regulatory framework for data privacy issues therefore domestically and worldwide is complex, continually evolving and sometimes conflicting and is likely to remain unsettled for the foreseeable future. Unanticipated events could drive the rapid adoption of legislation (e.g. by ballot initiative) or regulation affecting the use, collection or other processing of data and manner in which we conduct our business. Further restrictions could be placed upon the collection, disclosure, processing, use, storage and security of data, which could result in increases in costs or even make it impossible to obtain certain kinds of data, and could limit the ways in which we may collect, disclose, process, use, store or secure information.

The technology industry is subject to increasing scrutiny that could result in U.S. government actions that would negatively affect our business.

We may face claims relating to the information or content that is made available through our products. Though we contractually require our customers to represent that they will follow our policies with respect to all information or content they upload to our systems, we may be exposed to potential liability if our customers do not enforce such policies. In particular, the nature of our business may expose us to claims related to defamation, dissemination of misinformation or news hoaxes, discrimination, harassment, intellectual property rights, rights of publicity and privacy, personal injury torts, laws regulating hate speech or other types of content, and breach of contract, among others. The technology industry is subject to intense media, political and regulatory scrutiny, including on issues related to antitrust and AI, which exposes us to government investigations, legal actions and penalties. For instance, various regulatory agencies, including competition and consumer protection authorities, have active proceedings and investigations concerning multiple technology companies on antitrust and other issues. If we become subject to such investigations, we could be liable for substantial fines and penalties, be required to change our products or alter our business operations, receive negative publicity, or be subject to civil litigation, all of which could harm our business. Lawmakers also have proposed new laws and regulations, and modifications to existing laws and regulations, that affect the activities of technology companies such as the recent efforts to eliminate or modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If such laws and regulations are enacted or modified, they could negatively impact us, even if they are not specifically intended to affect our company. In addition, the introduction of new products, expansion of our activities in certain jurisdictions, or other actions that we may take may subject us to additional laws, regulations and other scrutiny. The increased scrutiny of certain acquisitions in the technology industry also could affect our ability to enter into strategic transactions or to acquire other businesses.

Compliance with new or modified laws and regulations could increase the cost of conducting our business, limit the opportunities to increase our revenues, or prevent us from offering products. While we have adopted policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, there can be no assurance that our employees, contractors or agents will not violate such laws and regulations. If we are found to have violated laws and regulations, it could materially adversely affect our reputation, financial condition and

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operating results. We also could be harmed by government investigations, litigation, or changes in laws and regulations directed at our customers, business partners, or suppliers in the technology industry that would have the effect of limiting our ability to do business with those entities. There can be no assurance that our business will not be materially adversely affected, individually or in the aggregate, by the outcomes of such investigations, litigation or changes to laws and regulations in the future.

Failure to comply with industry self-regulation could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

In addition to complying with government regulations, we participate in trade associations and industry self-regulatory groups that promote best practices or codes of conduct addressing data privacy. We also have agreed to follow certain practices as contractual obligations to customers (e.g. marketing agencies). We are a member of the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (“DAA”) Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising in the U.S., as well as the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (“DAAC”) in Canada and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (“EDAA”) in Europe. Under the rules of these bodies, in addition to other compliance obligations, we are required to participate in the AdChoices program (and other similar programs), which provides consumers a single online interface to obtain information about and manage data collection by online third parties such as us. These bodies investigate non-compliance and report significant instances of non-compliance to regulatory authorities such as the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) or data protection authorities in Europe. As new legislation comes into effect, such as the California Privacy Rights Act, self-regulatory programs may change their requirements based on such new legislation, which adds complexity and costs for companies to maintain compliance. If we fail to keep up with or to properly implement such changes, we could become subject to regulatory investigations, fines and legally-mandated corrective actions.

Risks Related to Being a Public Company

We are an emerging growth company subject to reduced disclosure requirements, and there is a risk that availing ourselves of such reduced disclosure requirements will make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an emerging growth company, and for as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, we intend to avail ourselves of exemptions from various reporting requirements such as, but not limited to, not being required to obtain auditor attestation of our reporting on internal control over financial reporting, having reduced disclosure obligations about our executive compensation in this prospectus and in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and not being required to hold advisory stockholder votes on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our Class A common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile.

We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of (i) the last day of the year in which we have total annual gross revenues of $1.07 billion or more; (ii) the last day of the year following the fifth anniversary of the date of the consummation of this offering; (iii) the date on which we have issued more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt during the previous three years; or (iv) the date on which we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer under the rules of the SEC.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.

Ensuring that we have adequate internal financial and accounting controls and procedures in place to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis is a costly and time-consuming effort that needs to be re-evaluated frequently. The rapid growth of our operations and the planned initial public offering has created a

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need for additional resources within the accounting and finance functions due to the increasing need to produce timely financial information and to ensure the level of segregation of duties customary for a U.S. public company. We continue to reassess the sufficiency of finance personnel in response to these increasing demands and expectations.

Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of our financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Our management does not expect that our internal control over financial reporting will prevent or detect all errors and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the control system’s objectives will be met. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within our company will have been detected.

We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting and may experience additional material weaknesses in the future. Our failure to remediate these material weaknesses and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could result in material misstatements in our financial statements, the inability to timely report our financial condition or results of operations, investors losing confidence in our reported financial information and our stock price being adversely affected.

Management and our independent registered public accounting firm have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting that affected our financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019. The material weaknesses that have been identified relate to lack of segregation of duties, lack of a risk assessment process and lack of contemporaneous documentation and accounting analysis. Specifically, our existing documentation of accounting positions related to stock-based compensation arrangements, redeemable convertible preferred stock and warrants lacked specificity and resulted in material accounting adjustments during the course of our audits. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Internal Control Over Financial Reporting.”

We cannot assure you that additional material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting will not be identified in the future. The failure to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could result in errors in our financial statements that could result in a restatement of financial statements, cause us to fail to meet our periodic reporting obligations and cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information, which could lead to a decline in our stock price.

Our management team has limited experience managing a public company and we will incur significantly increased costs and devote substantial management time as a result of operating as a public company.

Most members of our management team have limited experience managing a publicly traded company, interacting with public company investors and complying with the increasingly complex laws, rules and regulations that govern public companies. As a public company, we are subject to significant obligations relating to reporting, procedures and internal controls, and our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage such obligations. These obligations and scrutiny will require significant attention from our management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. We expect that compliance with these requirements will increase our compliance costs. We will need to hire additional accounting, financial and legal staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge and will need to establish an internal audit function. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we may incur as a result of becoming a public company or the timing of these costs.

The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert our management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain qualified board members.

As a public company, we will be subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, and will be required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street

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Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the NYSE and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly and increase demand on our systems and resources. Among other things, the Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and operating results and maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting. Significant resources and management oversight will be required to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting to meet this standard. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could adversely affect our business and operating results. Although we have already hired additional employees to comply with these requirements, we may need to hire even more employees in the future, which will increase our costs and expenses.

We also expect that being a public company and these new rules and regulations will make it more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain coverage. These factors could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our audit committee and compensation committee and qualified executive officers.

We have broad discretion in the use of net proceeds that we receive in this offering and we may not use them effectively.

We currently intend to use a significant portion of the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures. We may also use a portion of the net proceeds to fund possible investments in, or acquisitions of, complementary businesses, services or technologies. We have no current agreements or commitments with respect to any investment or acquisition and we currently are not engaged in negotiations with respect to any investment or acquisition. Our management will have broad discretion in the application of the net proceeds, including possible acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses or technologies. The failure by our management to apply these funds effectively could adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results and impair our ability to raise additional capital in the future on favorable terms or at all.

Risks Related to This Offering and Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock

There is no existing market for our Class A common stock and we do not know if one will develop to provide you with adequate liquidity to sell our Class A common stock at prices equal to or greater than the price you paid in this offering.

Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. We cannot predict the extent to which investor interest in our company will lead to the development of an active trading market or how liquid that market may become. If an active trading market does not develop for our Class A common stock, you may have difficulty selling any shares that you purchase. The initial public offering price of our Class A common stock was determined by negotiations between us, the selling stockholders and the underwriters and may not be indicative of prices that will prevail after the completion of this offering. The market price of our Class A common stock may decline below the initial public offering price, and you may not be able to resell your shares at, or above, the initial public offering price.

Substantial future sales of shares of our Class A common stock could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock following the closing of this offering, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers and significant stockholders, or the perception that these

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sales might occur, could depress the market price of our Class A common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. We are unable to predict the effect that such sales may have on the prevailing market price of our common stock.

All of our executive officers, directors, the selling stockholders and the holders of substantially all of our capital stock are subject to lock-up agreements that restrict their ability to transfer shares of our capital stock for 365 days after the date of this prospectus; provided that for certain holders of 25,443,089 shares of Class A common stock, these restriction only apply for 180 days after the date of this prospectus as apposed to 365 days after the date of this prospectus. Subject to certain exceptions and certain early release provisions, the lock-up agreements limit the number of shares of capital stock that may be sold immediately following this offering unless Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC permits our stockholders who are subject to these lock-up agreements to sell shares prior to the expiration of the lock-up agreements. See “Underwriters” for a description of these agreements.

Upon the closing of this offering, we will have 37,156,095 outstanding shares of our Class B common stock (all of which are convertible into Class A common stock on a one-for-one basis) and 154,469,949 outstanding shares of our Class A common stock, based on the number of shares outstanding as of March 31, 2021. This includes the shares included in this offering, which may be sold in the public market immediately without restriction or further registration under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), except for any shares held by our affiliates as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act.

The dual class structure of our common stock will have the effect of concentrating voting control with those stockholders who held our capital stock prior to the completion of this offering, including our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer and his affiliates, who will hold in the aggregate 71.0% of the voting power of our capital stock following the completion of this offering. This will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters, including the election of directors, amendments to our organizational documents and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transaction requiring stockholder approval.

Our Class B common stock is entitled to ten votes per share and our Class A common stock, which is the stock we are offering in this initial public offering, is entitled to one vote per share. The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer and his affiliates, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of our directors and the approval of any change in control transaction.

Upon the completion of this offering, our current founder and chief executive officer and his affiliates will hold, in aggregate 71.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. For more information, see “Principal Stockholders.” As a result, these stockholders, acting together, will have control over most matters that require approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions. They may also have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree and which may be adverse to your interests. Corporate action might be taken even if other stockholders, including those who purchase shares in this offering, oppose them. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying, preventing or deterring a change of control or other liquidity event of our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their shares of common stock as part of a sale or other liquidity event and might ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.

We cannot predict the impact our capital structure may have on our stock price.

We cannot predict whether our dual class structure will result in a lower or more volatile market price of our Class A common stock, in adverse publicity or other adverse consequences. For example, certain index providers have announced restrictions on including companies with multiple-class share structures in certain of their indices. In July 2017, the FTSE Russell announced that it plans to require new constituents of its indices to have greater than 5% of the company’s voting rights in the hands of public stockholders, and S&P Dow Jones announced that it will no longer admit companies with multiple-class share structures to certain of its indices.

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Affected indices include the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600, which together make up the S&P Composite 1500. Also in 2017, Morgan Stanley Capital International (“MSCI”), a leading stock index provider, opened public consultations on their treatment of no-vote and multi-class structures and temporarily barred new multi-class listings from certain of its indices; however, in October 2018, MSCI announced its decision to include equity securities “with unequal voting structures” in its indices and to launch a new index that specifically includes voting rights in its eligibility criteria. Under such announced policies, the dual class structure of our common stock would make us ineligible for inclusion in certain indices and, as a result, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other investment vehicles that attempt to passively track those indices would not invest in our Class A common stock. It is unclear what effect, if any, these policies will have on the valuations of publicly traded companies excluded from such indices, but it is possible that they may depress valuations, as compared to similar companies that are included. As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.

The price of our Class A common stock may fluctuate significantly, and you could lose all or part of your investment.

The market price of our Class A common stock is likely to be volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to many risk factors listed in this section, and others beyond our control, including:

Recently, the stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. These fluctuations have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political, regulatory and market conditions, may negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock. If the market price of our Class A common stock after this offering does not exceed the public offering price, you may lose some or all of your investment. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future, which could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention.

We do not intend to pay dividends on our Class A common stock for the foreseeable future and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our Class A common stock.

We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not anticipate paying any dividends on our Class A common stock in the foreseeable future. Any

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determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Consequently, your only opportunity to achieve a return on your investment in our company will be if the market price of our Class A common stock appreciates and you sell your shares at a profit. There is no guarantee that the price of our Class A common stock that will prevail in the market will ever exceed the price that you paid.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish or cease publishing research or reports about us, our business or our market, or if they change their recommendations regarding our Class A common stock adversely, the trading price of our Class A common stock and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our Class A common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us or our business. We do not control these analysts. If any of the analysts who cover us downgrade our Class A common stock or our industry, or the stock of any of our competitors, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our Class A common stock may decline. If analysts cease coverage of us or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause the price or trading volume of our Class A common stock to decline and our Class A common stock to be less liquid.

Purchasers in this offering will experience immediate and substantial dilution in the net tangible book value of their investment.

The offering price of our Class A common stock is substantially higher than the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of our Class A common stock, which after giving effect to this offering was $0.29 per share of our Class A common stock as of March 31, 2021. As a result, you will incur immediate and substantial dilution in net tangible book value when you buy our Class A common stock in this offering. This means that you will pay a higher price per share than the amount of our total tangible assets, less our total liabilities, divided by the number of shares of all of our common stock outstanding. In addition, you may also experience additional dilution if rights to purchase our common stock that are outstanding or that we may issue in the future are exercised or converted or we issue additional shares of our common stock at prices lower than our net tangible book value at such time. See “Dilution.”

Anti-takeover provisions contained in our charter documents and Delaware law could prevent a takeover that stockholders consider favorable and could also reduce the market price of our stock.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors and take other corporate actions. These provisions will:

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These and other provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and under Delaware law could discourage potential takeover attempts, reduce the price investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our Class A common stock and result in the market price of our Class A common stock being lower than it would be without these provisions. For more information, see the section of this prospectus captioned “Description of Capital Stock—Anti-Takeover Provisions.”

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide, subject to certain exceptions, that (i) the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the sole and exclusive forum for certain stockholder litigation matter and (ii) the federal district courts of the United States of America will be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action under the Securities Act, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, employees or stockholders.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that will become effective immediately prior to the closing of this offering provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for:

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By becoming a stockholder in our Company, you will be deemed to have notice of and have consented to the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation related to choice of forum. This exclusive forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. Although our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will contain the choice of forum provision described above, it is possible that a court could find that such a provision is inapplicable for a particular claim or action or that such provision is unenforceable. If a court were to find the exclusive forum provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving the dispute in other jurisdictions, which could seriously harm our business.

Unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the federal district courts of the United States of America will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.

There is uncertainty whether a court would enforce an exclusive federal forum provision for Securities Act claims. Our decision to adopt such a federal forum provision followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware holding that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Delaware Supreme Court or determine that our federal forum provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of our federal forum provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court. We note that stockholders cannot waive compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.

Under our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, the exclusive forum provision described above does not apply to claims arising under the Exchange Act. Accordingly, actions by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court. Our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder. For more information, see the section of this prospectus captioned “Description of Capital Stock—Choice of Forum.”

As a result of this offering, we will become a “controlled company” within the meaning of the NYSE rules and, as a result, expect to qualify for, and may rely on, exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements.

After this offering, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, David Steinberg, will beneficially own a majority of the combined voting power of all classes of our outstanding voting stock. As a result, we will be a controlled company within the meaning of the applicable stock exchange corporate governance standards. Under the NYSE rules, a company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by another person or group of persons acting together is a controlled company and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements, including the requirements that:

These requirements will not apply to us as long as we remain a controlled company. We have not elected to take advantage of the exemption from these requirements, but may elect to do so in the future so long as we remain a “controlled company.” If we choose to rely on these exemption, you may not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements of the NYSE.

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CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Any statements made in this prospectus that are not statements of historical fact, including statements about our beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements and should be evaluated as such. Forward-looking statements include information concerning possible or assumed future results of operations, including descriptions of our business plan and strategies. These statements often include words such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “suggests,” “plan,” “believe,” “intend,” “estimates,” “targets,” “projects,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “may,” “will,” “forecast” and other similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are contained throughout this prospectus, including the sections entitled “Prospectus Summary,” “Risk Factors,” “Capitalization,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Business.” We base these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, plans and assumptions that we have made in light of our experience in the industry, as well as our perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors we believe are appropriate under the circumstances at such time. As you read and consider this prospectus, you should understand that these statements are not guarantees of future performance or results. The forward-looking statements are subject to and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made, you should be aware that many factors could affect our business, results of operations and financial condition and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that may materially affect such forward-looking statements include:

These cautionary statements should not be construed by you to be exhaustive and are made only as of the date of this prospectus. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

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USE OF PROCEEDS

We estimate that the net proceeds to us from the sale of the shares of our common stock in this offering will be approximately $148.1 million, based upon an initial public offering price of $11.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. If the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in this offering in full, we estimate that our net proceeds will be approximately $145.5 million, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock in this offering by the selling stockholders. We will, however, bear the costs associated with the sale of shares of Class A common stock by the selling stockholders, which will be $5.5 million (or $8.1 million if the underwriters exercise in full their option to purchase additional shares). The selling stockholders will not deduct any underwriting discounts or commissions from the proceeds of their sale of our Class A common stock. We will deduct all underwriting discounts and commissions and pay all offering expenses in connection with this offering. For more information, see “Principal and Selling Stockholders” and “Underwriters.”

Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $11.00 per share would increase (decrease) the net proceeds that we receive from this offering by approximately $14.0 million, assuming that the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1,000,000 shares in the number of shares of common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) the net proceeds that we receive from this offering by approximately $10.2 million, assuming the assumed initial public offering price remains the same, and after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.

The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility and to create a public market for our common stock.

Based on the assumed initial public offering price per share of $11.00, which is the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, we intend to use the net proceeds of this offering as follows:

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As a result of the Tax Withholding Repurchase and the Stock Repurchase, we will repurchase an aggregate of 3,854,940 shares of Class A restricted stock and 2,307,692 shares of Class B common stock and cancel an aggregate of 173,481 restricted stock units.

The total benefit to our officers and directors in connection with the Stock Repurchase is $30.0 million (inclusive of approximately $3.8 million for tax withholding). See “Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions—Stock Repurchase.”

Each $1.00 increase or decrease in the assumed initial public offering price per share of $11.00, which is the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase or decrease the amount we would be required to pay in connection with the Tax Withholding Repurchase and the Stock Repurchase by approximately $6.3 million. See the section titled “Use of Proceeds” for additional information.

The expected use of net proceeds from this offering represents our intentions based upon our present plans and business conditions. We cannot predict with certainty all of the particular uses for the proceeds of this offering or the amounts that we will actually spend on the uses set forth above. Accordingly, our management will have broad discretion in applying the net proceeds of this offering. In addition, the amount and timing of what we actually spend for these purposes may vary significantly and will depend on a number of factors, including our future revenue and cash generated by operations and the other factors described in “Risk Factors.” Pending these uses, we intend to invest the net proceeds of this offering in a variety of capital-preservation investments, including short- and intermediate-term investments, interest-bearing investments, investment-grade securities, government securities and money market funds.

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DIVIDEND POLICY

We do not currently intend to pay any cash dividends on our Class A or Class B common stock. Any declaration and payment of future dividends to holders of our Class A common stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on many factors, including our financial condition, earnings, operating results, contractual restrictions, capital requirements, business prospects and other factors our board of directors may deem relevant.

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CAPITALIZATION

The following table sets forth our cash and cash equivalents and our capitalization as of March 31, 2021 on:

You should read this table together with the sections titled “Use of Proceeds,” “Selected Consolidated Financial and Operating Information,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus. The pro forma as adjusted information below is illustrative only and our capitalization following the completion of this offering will be adjusted based on the actual initial public offering price and other terms of this offering determined at pricing.

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If the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares of our Class A common stock was exercised in full, as adjusted cash and cash equivalents and total stockholders’ (deficit) / equity would be $127.9 million and $53.6 million, respectively. See “Use of Proceeds.”

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DILUTION

If you invest in our Class A common stock in this offering, your ownership interest will be immediately diluted to the extent of the difference between the initial public offering price per share of our Class A common stock and the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of our Class A common stock after this offering. Dilution results from the fact that the per share public offering price of the Class A common stock is substantially in excess of the book value per share of our Class A common stock after this offering. Our net tangible book value as of March 31, 2021, was $(258.1) million, or $(2.58) per share of our Class A common stock. Net tangible book value per share represents our total tangible assets reduced by the amount of our total liabilities, divided by the total number of shares of our Class A common stock outstanding.

Our pro forma net tangible book value as of March 31, 2021, was $(22.2) million, or $(0.12) per share of our common stock. Pro forma net tangible book value represents the amount of our total tangible assets less our total liabilities, after giving effect to the Preferred Conversion, the Warrant Exercise, the Reclassification and the Class B Exchange. Pro forma net tangible book value per share represents our pro forma net tangible book value divided by the total number of shares outstanding as of March 31, 2021, after giving effect to the Preferred Conversion, the Warrant Exercise, the Reclassification and the Class B Exchange.

After giving effect to (a) the sale of 15,617,272 shares of Class A common stock by us in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $11.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the price range listed on the cover page of this prospectus, and (b) the application of the proceeds from this offering as described in “Use of Proceeds,” including the Stock Repurchase and the Tax Withholding Repurchase, after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us, as if each had occurred on March 31, 2021, our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value as of March 31, 2021 would have been $56.3 million, or $0.29 per share of Class A common stock. This amount represents an immediate increase in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $0.42 per share of Class A common stock to our existing stockholders before this offering and an immediate and substantial dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $10.71 per share of Class A common stock to new investors purchasing shares of Class A common stock in this offering. We determine dilution by subtracting the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of Class A common stock after this offering from the amount of cash that a new investor paid for a share of Class A common stock in this offering. The following table illustrates this dilution, assuming the underwriters do not exercise their option to purchase additional shares of Class A common stock:

A $1.00 increase or decrease in the assumed initial public offering price of $11.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the price range listed on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase or decrease the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of Class A common stock after this offering by approximately $7.7 million, and the dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of Class A common stock to new investors by approximately $0.96 assuming that the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. Similarly, each increase or decrease of 1.0 million shares of Class A common stock in the number of shares offered by us would increase or decrease, as applicable, the as adjusted net tangible book value by $0.05 per share of Class A

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common stock and increase or decrease, as applicable, the dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value to new investors by $0.05 per share of Class A common stock, assuming the assumed initial public offering price remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.

If the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares of Class A common stock is exercised in full, the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of Class A common stock would be $0.28 per share, and the dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of Class A common stock to new investors in this offering would be $10.72 per share.

The following table summarizes, on an as adjusted basis as of March 31, 2021, the differences between the number of shares of Class A common stock purchased from us, the total consideration paid to us in cash and the average price per share that existing investors and new investors paid. The calculation below is based on an assumed initial public offering price of $11.00 per share of Class A common stock, which is the midpoint of the price range listed on the cover page of this prospectus, before deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.

A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial offering price would increase (decrease) total consideration paid by new investors, total consideration paid by all stockholders and average price per share paid by all stockholders by $15.6 million, $15.6 million and $0.08 per share, respectively. An increase (decrease) of 1.0 million in the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us in this offering would increase (decrease) total consideration paid by new investors, total consideration paid by all stockholders and average price per share paid by all stockholders by $11.0 million, $11.0 million and $0.06 per share, respectively.

Except as otherwise indicated, the above discussion and tables assume no exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares of our Class A common stock from us. If the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares of our Class A common stock were exercised in full, our existing stockholders would own 91.9% and our new investors would own 8.1% of the total number of shares of our Class A common stock outstanding upon completion of this offering.

We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of our Class A common stock by the selling stockholders in this offering. Accordingly, there will be no dilutive impact as a result of such sales.

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SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL AND OPERATING INFORMATION

The following table sets forth our selected historical consolidated financial and operating information and other data for the periods and dates indicated. The consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The consolidated balance sheet data as of March 31, 2021 and the consolidated statement of operations and comprehensive loss for the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020 have been derived from our unaudited consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this prospectus and include, in our opinion, all adjustments, consisting only of normal recurring adjustments, that we consider necessary for the fair statement of the financial information set forth in those statements.

This data should be read in conjunction with, and is qualified in its entirety by reference to, the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Capitalization” sections of this prospectus and our consolidated financial statements and notes thereto for the periods and dates indicated included elsewhere in this prospectus.

Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Loss

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Consolidated Balance Sheet Data

The following table reconciles adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (“GAAP”).

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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion and analysis provides information which management believes is relevant to an assessment and understanding of our consolidated results of operations and financial condition. The discussion should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this prospectus. This discussion contains forward-looking statements and involves numerous risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those described under the heading “Risk Factors.” Actual results may differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Additionally, our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any period in the future.

Overview

Zeta is a leading omnichannel data-driven cloud platform that provides enterprises with consumer intelligence and marketing automation software. We empower our customers to target, connect and engage consumers through software that delivers personalized marketing across all addressable channels, including email, social media, web, chat, CTV and video, among others. We believe our actionable insights derived from consumer intent enable our customers to acquire, grow and retain consumer relationships more efficiently and effectively than the alternative solutions available in the market.

Our top-rated ZMP is the largest omnichannel marketing platform with identity data at its core. The ZMP analyzes billions of structured and unstructured data points to predict consumer intent by leveraging sophisticated machine learning algorithms and the industry’s largest opted-in data set for omnichannel marketing. The ZMP connects with consumers through native integration of marketing channels and API integration with third parties. The ZMP’s data-driven algorithms and processes learn and optimize each customer’s marketing program producing a ‘flywheel effect’ that enables our customers to test, learn and improve their marketing programs in real time. This continuous learning loop provides greater efficiency and effectiveness for our customers and creates a competitive advantage for Zeta.

The ZMP empowers our customers to personalize consumer experiences at scale across multiple touchpoints. Marketing programs are created and orchestrated by our customers through automated workflows and sophisticated dashboards. Our CDP+ ingests, analyzes, and distills disparate data points to generate a single view of a consumer, encompassing identity, profile characteristics, behaviors and purchase intent, which is then made accessible through a single console. Our Opportunity Explorer synthesizes Zeta’s proprietary data and data generated by our customers to uncover consumer insights that are translated into marketing programs designed for highly targeted audiences across digital channels, including email, SMS, websites, applications, social media, CTV and chat.

Revenue is derived primarily from our technology platform via subscription fees, volume-based utilization fees and fees for professional services designed to increase our customers’ usage of our technology platform. For the three months ended March 31, 2021, our revenue was $101.5 million, representing an increase of 24.9% as compared to three months ended March 31, 2020. For the three months ended March 31, 2021, our net loss was $24.4 million, representing an increase of 48.8% as compared to three months ended March 31, 2020. Our adjusted EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020 was $13.0 million and $4.0 million, respectively. For the year ended December 31, 2020, our revenue was $368.1 million, representing an increase of 20.3% as compared to the year ended December 31, 2019. For the year ended December 31, 2020, our net loss was $53.2 million, representing an increase of 38.4% as compared to the year ended December 31, 2019. Our adjusted EBITDA for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019 was $39.6 million and $24.3 million, respectively. See the section titled “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for information regarding our use of adjusted EBITDA and its reconciliation to net loss determined in accordance with GAAP.

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In March 2021, we modified the vesting terms of our outstanding restricted stock awards and restricted stock units. After giving effect to the modification, our stock based compensation expense will have a material impact on our results of operations, including operating expenses and net income / loss during current and future periods. Such modification resulted in an incremental increase of $592.0 million in our total unrecognized stock based compensation expense. See “—Stock based compensation expense” for a breakdown of our expected stock based compensation expense for the next five years.

Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our Business

During the first half of 2020, some of our scaled customers in industries that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected, such as travel and hospitality and financial services, reduced or paused their levels of business with us. This resulted in a reduction of total scaled customers that has continued through the three months ended March 31, 2021 relative to the prior-year period, as we saw a decrease in our total scaled customers, from 361 customers to 333 customers. However, during the three months ended March 31, 2021, we experienced an increase in scaled customer ARPU, which resulted in our revenue increasing for the three months ended March 31, 2021 compared to the prior period. See “—Key Performance Metrics.” Our scaled customer ARPU growth resulted primarily from the initial effects of transitioning our sales team model to use a dedicated team for new business development and a separate team for training users on our platform and educating users on our platform capabilities. Our transition to this hunter/farmer sales model has included focusing more of our sales team on growth of existing scaled customers and aligning scaled customers with sellers that have specific industry expertise. See “Business—Sales & Marketing.” In addition, scaled customer ARPU also benefitted from increased levels of business from customers in industries that the COVID-19 pandemic has positively affected, such as insurance, automotive and telecom.

In future periods, we expect that our customers in industries such as travel and hospitality and financial services will return to historical levels of spending as the recovery takes hold and as pandemic-related restrictions subside. Although the pandemic-related growth levels we have experienced may decrease in the future, we expect that the success of our new sales team model will continue to drive new business from customers. As a result, we expect customer spending in industries where we saw strength during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue to increase even as the growth effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on some industries may tend to diminish.

Factors Affecting Results of Operations

The following factors have been important to our business and we expect them to impact our results of operations and financial condition in future periods:

New Scaled Customer Acquisition

We are focused on increasing the number of scaled customers that adopt the ZMP in their enterprises. Our long-term growth and operating results will depend on our ability to attract more scaled customers as we address their most pressing marketing automation needs. We will continue to focus on enterprises across multiple geographies. Between January 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, our sales team increased by 22 sales employees, and we expect to continue to invest in our go-to-market efforts in 2021. We have significantly enhanced our sales techniques in order to build a collaborative environment that encourages cross-selling and implemented a new learning and development program for our sales team. Our sales team productivity ramps as tenure increases and our current management system gives us confidence that we are well positioned for sustainable growth. Our Opportunity Explorer is a module that provides actionable insights to our customers and serves as an entry point into the ZMP. Opportunity Explorer has been a proven way to land scaled customers, with minimal cost of implementation and high value adoption.

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Expand Sales to Existing Scaled Customers

We adhere to a “land, expand, extend” sales model. After prospecting and landing new scaled customers, we focus on expanding sales to such scaled customers. This includes increasing their use of one product and/or embedding multiple products within an enterprise with our Opportunity Explorer serving as the connective tissue across multiple products. We have scaled customers both in the U.S. and internationally and we believe we can achieve growth by cross-selling our existing solutions and introducing new features and functionalities within the platform. We expect that our ability to increase adoption of our products within existing scaled customers increases our future opportunities through additional sales.

We use an annual net revenue retention (“NRR”) rate as a measure of our ability to retain and expand business generated from our existing scaled customers. We define “scaled customers” as customers from which we generated more than $100,000 in revenue per year. We believe that many companies frequently use NRR as an indicator for determining customer loyalty. We calculate our NRR rate by dividing current year revenue earned from customers from which we also earned revenue in the prior year, by the prior year revenue from those same customers. We exclude political and advocacy customers, which represented 4.9% and 1.0% of revenue for 2020 and 2019, respectively, from our calculation of NRR rate because of the biennial nature of these customers. Our annual NRR rate for scaled customers was 122.3% and 103.6% for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.

Our customer loyalty is also reflected in the tables below, which breakdown the tenure of our scaled customers for the year ended December 31, 2020.

Tenure for All Scaled Customers for Year Ended December 31, 2020

Additionally, of our 68 scaled customers who generate over $1.0 million in revenue, 41 have a tenure of over 3 years.

Adoption of Marketing Automation Products

Our ability to drive adoption of the ZMP will depend on the overall demand for marketing automation solutions. IDC predicts that by 2024, spending on digital transformation technology will represent 57% of all IT spending as compared to 38% in 2019. We expect investment in marketing technology by enterprise companies to grow faster than the IT market overall. Additionally, as enterprise marketing spend rapidly shifts towards digital from offline channels, we expect marketing automation technology will benefit. As a result, we expect our enterprise customer base to grow and propel greater platform deployment and usage. While we do not believe our competitors offer a comparable all-in-one platform solution for marketing automation, certain competitors offer point solutions that compete with specific tools and products we offer as part of the ZMP. Potential customers may also elect to build in-house solutions for marketing automation. While it is difficult to predict adoption rates and future product demand, we are focused on continuing to innovate and create marketing automation products that address the business requirements of our customers better than alternative solutions.

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Investment in Innovation

We intend to invest in our business in order to drive long term growth in an expanding market and capture economies of scale derived from a larger business base. For example, we plan to invest in our research and development activities to ensure we remain at the forefront of data management, AI development and marketing automation. We will also continue to invest in our sales and marketing capabilities. Lastly, we expect to invest in the expansion of markets including international and the B2B sector. We plan to incur additional general and administrative expenses to support our growth. Even as cost of revenue and other expenses fluctuate over time and may be negatively impacted by factors beyond our control, we plan to remain focused on making necessary investments to drive long-term growth.

Seasonality

In general, the marketing industry experiences seasonal trends that affect the vast majority of participants in the digital marketing ecosystem. Historically, marketing spend is higher in the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with the holiday shopping season as compared to the first quarter. As a result, the subsequent first quarter tends to reflect lower activity levels and lower performance. We generally expect these seasonality trends to continue and our ability to effectively manage our resources in anticipation of these trends may affect our operating results.

Key Performance Metrics

We review several key performance metrics, discussed below, to evaluate our business, track performance, identify trends, formulate plans and make strategic decisions. We believe that the presentation of such metrics provides investors with effective ways to measure and model the performance of companies such as ours, with recurring revenue streams.

Scaled customers

We measure and track the number of scaled customers on an annual basis because our ability to attract new scaled customers, grow our scaled customer base and retain or expand our business with existing scaled customers is both an important contributor to our revenue growth and an indicator to investors of our measurable success. We define scaled customers as customers from which we generated more than $100,000 in revenue per year. We calculate the number of scaled customers at the end of each quarter and on an annual basis as the number of customers billed during each applicable period. In 2020, we had 336 scaled customers that represented 96% of total revenue, compared to 330 scaled customers representing 95% of total revenue in 2019.

Scaled customers increased 1.8% for the year ended December 31, 2020, as compared to 2019, primarily due to growth in our customer base in the U.S. We had 68 and 55 scaled customers from which we generated more than $1.0 million in revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, respectively. For the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020, we had 70 and 59 scaled customers from which we generated more than $1.0 million in revenue, respectively. Our number of scaled customers decreased by 28 for the three months ended March 31, 2021 compared to the three months ended March 31, 2020. The decrease is primarily attributable to a significant majority of these scaled customers being involved in industries, particularly travel and hospitality and financial services, which were negatively impacted by COVID-19. See “—Overview—Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our Business.”

Scaled customer ARPU

We believe that our ability to increase scaled customer ARPU is an indicator of our ability to grow the long-term value of existing customer relationships. We calculate the scaled customer ARPU as revenue for the

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corresponding period divided by the average number of scaled customers during that period. We believe that scaled customer ARPU is useful for investors because it is an indicator of our ability to increase revenue and scale our business.

Scaled customer ARPU increased 20.2% for the year ended December 31, 2020, as compared to 2019, primarily due to higher usage of our platform among scaled customers. Scaled customer ARPU for our scaled customers from which we generated more than $1.0 million in revenue was $3.8 million and $3.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019 and $1.0 and $0.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Our scaled customer ARPU increased by $0.08 million for the three months ended March 31, 2021 compared to the three months ended March 31, 2020. This increase was primarily caused by changes in our sales model to increase number of and productivity of sales team focused on existing scaled customer growth as well as increased levels of business from customers in industries that the COVID-19 pandemic has positively affected. See “Business—Sales & Marketing” and “—Overview—Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our Business.”

Description of Certain Components of Financial Data

Revenues

Our revenue is primarily derived from use of our platform via subscription fees, volume-based utilization fees and fees for professional services. Our platform revenue is comprised from a mix of direct platform revenue and integrated platform revenue, which leverages API integrations with third parties. For 2020 and 2019, we derived 68% and 69% of our revenues from direct platform revenue, and 32% and 31% of our revenues from integrated platform revenue, respectively. Revenues are recognized when control of these products or services is transferred to our customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to in exchange for those products and services. Sales and other taxes collected by us are excluded from revenue. Our revenue recognition policies are discussed in more detail under “Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates.”

Cost of revenues (excluding depreciation and amortization)

Cost of revenue excludes depreciation and amortization and consists primarily of media and marketing costs and certain personnel costs. Media and marketing costs consist primarily of fees paid to third-party publishers, media owners or managers, or to strategic partners that are directly related to a revenue-generating event. We pay these third-party publishers, media owners or managers and strategic partners on a revenue-share, a cost-per-lead, cost-per-click, or cost-per-thousand-impressions basis. Expenses related to hosting our platform, which includes “internet traffic” associated with the viewing of available impressions or queries per second and costs of providing support to our customers are also included in cost of revenues. Personnel costs included in cost of revenues include salaries, bonuses, commissions and employee benefit costs primarily related to individuals directly associated with providing services to our customers. We expect costs of revenues will generally decrease in the future as a percentage of revenue over the long term.

General and administrative expenses

General and administrative expenses primarily consist of computer and telecom expenses, personnel costs, including salaries, bonuses and employee benefits costs associated with our executive, finance, legal, human resources and other administrative personnel, as well as accounting and legal professional services fees. We expect general and administrative expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods. We expect that general and administrative expenses will stay consistent as a percentage of revenue over the long term.

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Selling and marketing expenses

Selling and marketing expenses primarily consist of personnel costs, including salaries, bonuses, employee benefits costs and commission costs, for our sales and marketing personnel. Selling and marketing expenses also include costs for market development programs, advertising, promotional and other marketing activities. We intend to continue to invest in marketing initiatives and as a result we expect selling and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods. Selling and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue may fluctuate from period to period based on revenue levels and the timing of our investments in these functions over the long term.

Research and development expenses

Research and development expenses primarily consists of personnel costs, including salaries, bonuses and employee benefit costs, engineering and IT services associated with the ongoing research and maintenance of internal use software, including platform and related infrastructure. We expect to continue to invest in research and development in order to develop our technology platform to drive incremental value and growth and as a result we expect that research and development expenses will increase as a percentage of revenue in the long term.

Depreciation and amortization

Depreciation and amortization relate to property and equipment, website and software development costs as well as acquisition related intangible assets. We record depreciation and amortization when appropriate using straight-line method over the estimated useful life of the assets.

Acquisition related expenses

Acquisition related expenses primarily consists of legal fees associated with certain business combinations and addressing disputes related to those transactions. It also includes retention bonuses agreed to be paid to employees related to one-time events such as an acquisition or a significant transaction. We expect that acquisition related expenses will be correlated with future acquisitions (if any), which could be greater than or less than our historic levels.

Restructuring expenses

Restructuring expenses primarily consist of employee termination costs due to internal restructuring. We expect that restructuring expenses will be correlated with future restructuring activities (if any), which could be greater than or less than our historic levels.

Interest expense

Interest expense primarily consists of interest paid on long-term borrowings.

Other (income) / expense

Other (income) / expense primarily consist of changes in fair value of acquisition related liabilities, gains and losses on sale of assets, gains and losses on extinguishment of acquisition related liabilities and foreign exchange gains and losses. We expect that the magnitude of other income and expenses will depend on external factors such as foreign exchange rate, which could be greater than or less than our historic levels.

Change in fair value of warrants and derivative liabilities

Change in fair value of warrants and derivative liabilities primarily relate to warrants to purchase shares of our common stock that we issued in connection with previous financing rounds. We expect that the change in fair value of warrants and derivative liabilities will depend on external valuation-related factors, which could be greater than or less than our historic levels.

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Income tax provision

We account for income taxes in accordance with ASC 740, Income Taxes, which requires an asset and liability approach for the financial accounting and reporting of income taxes. Under this method, deferred tax assets and liabilities are determined based on temporary differences between the financial statement and tax basis of assets and liabilities using enacted tax rates in effect for the year in which the differences are expected to reverse. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax laws is recognized in the consolidated statements of operations in the period that includes the enactment date. A valuation allowance is established when we determine that it is more likely than not that some portion or all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. We have concluded that the deferred tax assets are not realizable on a more-likely-than-not basis and that a full valuation allowance is required, with the exception of AMT credits that are refundable as a result of U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and certain deferred tax assets in the Czech Republic, India and the U.K.

Stock based compensation expense

After giving effect to the modification of the vesting terms of our restricted stock awards and restricted stock units, our stock based compensation expense will have a material impact on our results of operations, including operating expenses and net income / loss during current and future periods. Pursuant to the modified vesting terms, we will not recognize any stock based compensation expense until the initial public offering. Upon the closing of this offering, we will recognize approximately $103.8 million in stock based compensation expense. See Note 11 to our condensed unaudited consolidated financial statements as of and for the three months ended March 31, 2021 included elsewhere in this prospectus for a description of the modified vesting terms.

Assuming that the offering is completed in fiscal year 2021, we will expense the unrecognized stock based compensation (which includes $592.0 million related to modification to our existing restricted stock and restricted stock units) as follows, subject to future forfeitures:

Results of Operations

We operate as a single reportable segment to reflect the way our Chief Operating Decision Maker (“CODM”) reviews and assesses the performance of the business. The Company’s CODM is the Chief Executive Officer.

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