Inside a Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Consent Farm: A Scam for the Ages

Opinion: ZETA remains a Strong Sell.

Note: before we dive in, please go to the following websites and nab them/screen grab them before they are potentially taken down. Zeta Global has been deleting or refactoring their consent farms these past two weeks. I already have timestamped evidence of these consent farms, but I want you to have them too in case they are removed.

1) https://www.freshcareerfinder.com/. Grab it and nab it.
2) https://focusgrouppanel.com/. Grab it and nab it.
3) https://enroll.focusgrouppanel.com/ Grab it and nab it.
4) https://freshcareerfinder.com/pp. This is FreshCareerFinder's Privacy Policy. Grab it and nab it.

Background

1. On October 11, I discussed how Zeta Global uses low-quality political blogs and election prediction market PredictIt for comments section data collection through the Disqus product and why Zeta Global’s ‘Zeta 2025 Plan’ aligns Zeta equity value to coincide with the 2024 US election cycle.
2. On October 15, I discussed how Zeta Global leaked the data of ~15,000 Zeta customers and prospects by failing to secure customer data and leaving it exposed on the open, public internet. We went over how we can use Zeta’s leaked data to proxy which customers are among Zeta’s largest.
3. On October 18, Barclays downgraded ZETA, moving the stock rating from Overweight to Equal weight with a price target of $28.00.
4. On October 21, I discussed how Zeta Global runs a comically ridiculous business called “Aptroid” and has filled Aptroid’s website with fraudulent marketing claims. We also went over how there is almost nothing at all to Zeta Global’s “AI” story and how Zeta is using Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) for a white label in addition to reselling Snowflake, thus “double dipping” on customers.
5. On October 25, I covered how Zeta Global has been manipulating revenue guidance through creative wordsmithing in order to dupe investors into believing certain election revenue is not cyclical, thus giving a rosier picture of sustainable revenue growth.
6. On November 22, I dove into some of the false claims Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg and CFO Chris Greiner have made in the past two weeks on their cover-your-a** tour after ZETA has tanked.

Today, we'll dive into how Zeta Global uses robocalling/SMS spam, consent farming, and fake job opportunities and sweepstakes to harvest consumer data used to build their identity graph. Zeta Global is merely a lead list generator - a far cry from their claims of being an "AI" play.

I strongly maintain that Zeta Global is now deliberately misleading investors about consent farms as Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg and CFO Chris Greiner have claimed in investor materials as recent at November 20, 2024 that they do not operate consent farms.

I fully, fundamentally, unequivocally state that the recent statements about Zeta Global's consent farms not existing when in fact there is ample evidence of them existing to this day constitutes securities fraud from CEO David Steinberg and likely CFO Chris Greiner, as these Zeta Global consent farms are rampant.

On Friday Nov. 22, we went into an ArcaMax (Zeta Global owns Arcamax) consent farm sweepstakes contest run by Zeta Global, even though on Wednesday, Nov. 20 of the same week Zeta Global claimed they do not operate consent farms with promises of jobs or contest prizes.

We're going deeper into active Zeta Global consent farms. These consent farms, which Zeta Global claims do not exist do in fact exist right now.

What is FreshCareerFinder?

Please go ahead and visit: https://www.freshcareerfinder.com/ and nab it and screenshot it before it's potentially scrubbed.

What you'll notice if you try and query on various cities around the US is that in each case, no matter the midsize or large city, promoted right near the top, is the opportunity to join "Focus Group Panel" at FocusGroupPanel.com, with two different ads - one ostensibly from Focus Group Panel itself and a separate ad from "Apex Focus Group" offering the chance to "Join Focus Group Panel" through their site.

Go try it out. Pick any medium to small city in the US and in the top 4 job listings you'll have an opportunity to join Focus Group Panel with promises of payment for completing consumer surveys.

All of the below screen grabs were taken on November 24, 2024.

Then, if you click on an opportunity to join Focus Group Panel, you'll be directed to the following screen:

Of course, if you actually look at the Terms or Privacy Policy you will see there is a much darker game at play here - by submitting your email address to learn more about the Focus Group Panel job opportunity presented via FreshCareerFinder.com, you are giving away your right for Zeta Global to use your email and any other personal information you submit to match your profile to other data it has housed, including your age, race, gender, citizenship, your physical location or movements, your job history and job performance data from current or past employers, and a variety other other data points, all because you believed there was actually a job offering you $250/hr. to complete consumer research panels from home.

Let's dive further into Focus Group Panel - after all, that's where we're supposed to be getting all these great job opportunities for $250/hr. working from home in our sweatpants.

What the Heck is this 'Focus Group Panel' Getting Priority Placement on Zeta Global Property FreshCareerFinder.com?

If we go to Focus Group Panel - ostensibly a company that posts job opportunities for people to participate in panel groups and consumer research for cash - what do we find?

Go to https://focusgrouppanel.com. Per usual, load it up and take screen grabs before it's potentially deleted.

At this site you'll find all sorts of financial debauchery, including right at the top of the page articles about how to borrow money instantly and how to borrowing money against your life insurance policy.

These articles were updated or published just in the last month, in late October, 2024.

Just in case this is taken down, you can find the results from November 13, 2024, just 2 weeks ago, on the Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

In fact, almost everything on Focus Group Panel is related to:

• Borrowing against life insurance policies
• Borrowing against one's home (HELOC)
• Getting on government assistance

So clearly Focus Group Panel is not exactly marketing to consumers with money to spend on restaurants, retail clothing, etc. In fact, the whole site is built to collect consent from an audience in need of money fast, who may be on government assistance or close to it, with all kinds of schemes like borrowing against life insurance policies and HELOCs making up the content on Focus Group Panel, which is ostensibly a website for hosting jobs and opportunities related to participation in consumer research panels and focus groups.

Yet, it just gets worse when we look at Focus Group Panel's Terms.

What is most interesting here is the business address of 10409 Trout Road, Orlando, FL 32836 for Focus Group Panel.

If we Google this, we find on Google Maps that this is just a residential house in Orlando, Florida, with a boat parked out front.

So who is running Focus Group Panel?

Is this really just a half-baked predatory consent farm preying on people down-on-their-luck or who need a job? Where does this Zeta Global consent farm lead?

Well, using Orange County, Florida records we can see that this property has a parcel number of #322328187200280 per local government records.

So this Zeta Global FreshCareerFinder.com leads people to Focus Group Panel to this residence, which had work done in the past few years, granted by a Mark Phaneuf.

Who is Mark Phaneuf?

The whole game is given away on his LinkedIn profile.

Per his LinkedIn, Mark Phaneuf is running a lead generation business out of his house, and clearly partnered with Zeta Global to advertise Focus Group Panel, which is a website full of bad financial advice, used to lure in unsuspecting citizens with the promise of job opportunities.

This is a consent farm. In fact it's a consent farm of Focus Group Panel which pulls in people from Zeta Global's consent farm of FreshCareerFinder.com.

It's really just a guy in Orlando working out of his house.

Classic Zeta Global nonsense.

Bringing It Together: Zeta Global's Legal Issues with FreshCareerFinder.com

Zeta Global has been in legal trouble for its behavior with spam texting/consent farming related to FreshCareerFinder.com.

From the below Hunsinger v. Zeta Global Holdings Corp, et al.:

Wow, very salacious stuff. This sounds terrible that you can text STOP back to a number and still not get removed from spam.

So who is using short-code "52560" to allegedly spam text people, in cahoots with Zeta Global and Zeta Global's company Apptness?

Well that's easy, that's FreshCareerFinder.com.

You can find this info right on FreshCareerFinder's Terms, where they use 52560 as a short-code for texting as part of their SMS terms and conditions.

They'll send you up to 7 messages per week.

Grab this before it's deleted...

But wait a minute...

399 NW 2nd Ave in Boca Raton, Florida? Where have you seen that address before?

Well you just saw this address 2 minutes ago in the complaint of the lawsuit, in Section 1.4 of Hunsinger v. Zeta Global Corp et al. as that is the address of Apptness, which is owned by Zeta Global.

Scroll right up to item 1.4 in the above lawsuit.

It's all in the same building in Boca Raton, Florida.

Conclusion

Zeta Global absolutely runs "consent farms" throughout their business, and has for years, plus they partner with other consent farms. In fact, much of the business is consent farms.

Any claims Zeta Global's CEO David Steinberg or CFO Chris Greiner or anyone else may make about Zeta Global not running consent farms is materially false.

Running through user flows from Zeta Global -> Apptness' FreshCareerFinder -> Focus Group Panel just leads to consent farming, which opens up the opportunity for more spamming.

For example, here is my experience running through this Zeta Global partner process as Ms. Diarrhea Jones, a part-time employed college graduate born in 1958 with no kids, who owns a home and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Zeta Global may still have half of Wall Street fooled that they are an "AI" company but nothing is further from the truth. Zeta Global can have CEO David Steinberg go on CNBC and claim, "AI, AI, AI" until he is blue in the face, yet there is not any real AI, just a consent farming business.

Zeta Global is an almost complete scam. There is little to no AI present, just sketchy consent farms preying on the poorest people who may click on ads but don't actually have any real money to convert to Zeta Global client sales.

This is not a software business, just an agency business, and a scammy one at that.

This is absolutely securities fraud. This claim from Zeta Global on the November 20, 2024 investor presentation that Zeta Global does not use consent farms is false, as I've proved above, and as I proved in my post on Friday, November 22.

Zeta Global is lying to investors, period.

I have just laid out a whole network in this post showing that Zeta Global, through their business Apptness and its affiliates, is running consent farm networks today, November 25, 2024, after Zeta Global claimed on November 20, 2024 that they do not do this.

ZETA's claims are simply not correct, including the above statement pulled from the November 14, 2024 Fundstrat interview, which is available here via Fundstrat, with David Steinberg's fraudulent claims about consent farms available from 21:40 on.

This is absolutely securities fraud. Almost the entire business of how Zeta Global gets incremental "opted-in" customers is based on consent farms, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

I maintain that ZETA is a Strong Sell.

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This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. Lauren Balik does not represent the interests of any fund or of any investor other than herself. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This content speaks only as of the date published. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.