At CES 2026, Zeta Global announced a landmark collaboration with OpenAI to supercharge Athena by Zeta™. The partnership moves AI from the “sidebar” of marketing tools to the center of operations, transforming the Zeta Marketing Platform into an agentic “operating system” for growth.
Moving Beyond Insights: The Agentic Shift
The core of this update is the transition from insight (seeing data) to action (executing on data). By integrating OpenAI’s latest conversational models, Athena allows marketers to use natural language to solve complex problems that previously took days of manual data crunching.
Now in Beta: Insights vs. Advisor
Zeta has expanded beta access to two primary agentic applications, both seeing high early demand from major brands like TKO Group (UFC/WWE).
| Application | Core Function | Marketing Impact |
| Athena Insights | Conversational Analytics | Instant access to audience trends, emerging growth segments, and user-ready dashboards via natural language. |
| Athena Advisor | Goal-Driven Optimization | Scans active campaigns to recommend—or automatically execute—actions that drive revenue or customer retention. |
Also Read: Omnisend and Triple Whale Join Forces to Offer Unified Marketing Insights for Ecommerce Brands
Technical Synergy with OpenAI
This is not a simple API integration. Zeta is deepening its technical roadmap with OpenAI to ensure:
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Early Access: Zeta will integrate new OpenAI features and models ahead of general release.
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Contextual Reasoning: Athena leverages OpenAI’s reasoning capabilities to “listen” to a marketer’s business goals and suggest multi-step workflows.
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Reliability: The collaboration focuses on reducing hallucinations and ensuring enterprise-grade accuracy in data-driven decision-making.
Roadmap to General Availability
Early participants in the access program have reported “instantaneous” results for ad-hoc analysis and segment reporting. Zeta Global expects to roll out Athena to all customers by the end of Q1 2026.
