How Red Roof Is Bringing In More Customers With Zeta’s Voice-Activated AI Agent

Recorded: March 24, 2026, noon

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How Red Roof Is Bringing In More Customers With Zeta’s Voice-Activated AI Agent | AdExchanger

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Home AI How Red Roof Is Bringing In More Customers With Zeta’s Voice-Activated AI Agent

AI
How Red Roof Is Bringing In More Customers With Zeta’s Voice-Activated AI Agent By Joanna Gerber

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 – 5:45 am
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According to Ancient Greek legend, Athena was the goddess of wisdom and war. She was born from the head of Zeus, fully formed and armor clad.
According to AI Marketing Cloud Zeta, the story is a bit different.
Zeta announced “the birth of Athena,” on Tuesday. The new voice-activated AI agent integrates with Zeta’s existing marketing platform and can respond to natural-language queries with campaign stats and performance updates.
It also suggests improvements and revisions to in-flight campaigns, allowing marketers to get ahead of potential roadblocks and reach consumers who might otherwise be missed.

Thinking out loud
Zeta’s initial marketing platform launched in 2021 with AI built directly into it. AI was “foundational” to the original product, which allows clients to query data directly within the platform, rather than via a data repository, said David Steinberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Zeta.
Hotel chain Red Roof has partnered with Zeta for four years and was part of Athena’s beta phase.
Modern AI tools tend to be “more predictive than reactive,” said Red Roof President Zack Gharib. Predictive AI tends to provides better results without a lot of expensive trial-and-error, since it doesn’t rely on learnings from unsuccessful past campaigns to develop future ones. Athena allows Red Roof to guide its campaign creation, deployment timing and audience development with simple verbal commands, Gharib said.
Everything Athena can do today technically could have been done on an earlier version of the Zeta Marketing Platform, said Steinberg. “It’s just really complicated.”
Each step – from data analysis to audience building to campaign launch – lived in a different part of Zeta’s platform and had its own workflow, Steinberg explained. Athena brings each step into a single workflow “without all the back and forth.”
Athena’s verbal prompting is meant to provide easier access to preexisting data and suggestions of how to use it. It’s not designed to fix a specific problem, he added, but to make its clients “substantially better at what they’re currently doing.”
For instance, Red Roof’s team can verbally query Athena with questions about spend, performance and ways to improve, and the agent responds with relevant statistics and reports.
In addition to answering questions, Athena also plays the role of a “copilot,” said Steinberg, offering guidance and suggestions on spend and campaign deployment that a client might not think to ask about. If Red Roof asked to see how its current campaigns in flight were performing, for example, Athena might respond not just with performance numbers, but also by offering newly optimized channel budget recommendations.
A (red) roof over one’s head
Red Roof uses its own first-party data, along with additional data from Zeta (say that five times fast) to figure out who to target and when.
The hotel chain advertises across CTV and social and focuses on showing up in chatbot recommendations (i.e., GEO, or generative engine optimization).
Zeta relies heavily on its own data cloud, which features over 550 million people’s data worldwide. It then fuses that data with a client’s own first-party data to develop a proprietary algorithm, which constantly evolves as attribution data comes in over time.
Recently, Athena helped Red Roof determine a missed opportunity in Google bookings, by noticing a number of high-intent travelers who hadn’t completed the booking process, Gharib said.
Athena analyzed the paths of travelers who had completed their bookings to determine what messaging and user habits were most correlated to following through on bookings. Red Roof was then able to follow up with and ultimately convert more high-intent travelers who otherwise may have dropped off.
The longer a brand works with Zeta, Steinberg added, the larger its knowledge base grows, thanks to the increase in transaction data.
Long day’s journey into night
Athena also helps Red Roof reach audiences who it wouldn’t normally think to target, by using the hotel chain’s first-party data a location-based capability built into Zeta’s marketing platform.
While Red Roof typically targets people who earn under $100k, Athena has helped it unlock customers outside of its typical audience by targeting based on time and location. Someone who is within a few miles of a Red Roof hotel and has recently searched online for travel tips, for example, might be targeted later in the evening, under the assumption that they’re getting tired and need a place to stay for the night.
Thankfully, targeting based on tiredness isn’t an actual feature – at least, for now.
“I guarantee you Elon Musk knows when they’re tired,” he joked, but “Elon’s not supplying us with that information just yet.”

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ad targeting

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David Steinberg

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Zeta

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Zeta Global

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Red Roof Hotels is leveraging Zeta’s voice-activated AI agent, dubbed “Athena,” to enhance its customer acquisition strategies, marking a significant shift in their marketing approach. This initiative, spearheaded by Red Roof President Zack Gharib and Zeta’s co-founder and CEO David Steinberg, stems from Zeta’s initial AI-powered marketing platform launched in 2021. Athena represents an evolution of this platform, offering a natural language interface for marketers to interact with campaign data and receive actionable insights.

The core functionality of Athena revolves around real-time campaign monitoring and optimization. Marketers can use verbal commands to query campaign performance, spend, and identify areas for improvement, receiving immediate responses and suggested revisions. This direct interaction contrasts with the traditional workflow of navigating multiple data repositories and platforms – a process Steinberg describes as “really complicated.” Athena consolidates this information into a single workflow, streamlining operations and reducing the need for manual data manipulation.

Zeta’s underlying technology relies heavily on a vast data cloud containing information on over 550 million individuals. This data is then fused with Red Roof’s first-party data, creating a proprietary algorithm that continuously evolves with attribution data. The system doesn’t simply predict outcomes; it proactively guides campaign creation, deployment timing, and audience development. A notable example of Athena’s effectiveness was its identification of a missed opportunity for Google bookings, where it detected high-intent travelers who hadn’t completed their reservations, enabling Red Roof to proactively reach out and convert these potential guests.

Beyond simple data retrieval, Athena functions as a “copilot,” providing recommendations beyond what a marketer might instinctively consider. For example, if Red Roof inquired about campaign performance, Athena could not only provide performance numbers but also suggest optimized channel budget allocations. This suggests a level of proactive intelligence augmenting the marketer’s decision-making process.

Red Roof’s strategy incorporates a multi-channel approach, predominantly utilizing CTV and social media platforms, alongside a focus on chatbot recommendations (GEO or generative engine optimization). The hotel chain’s use of location-based targeting, enabled by Zeta’s platform, demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of customer behavior—alerting to targets like travelers actively searching for travel tips in the evening. This illustrates a shift from broad demographic targeting to more nuanced, real-time engagement based on contextual cues.

The success of Athena is intrinsically linked to the expansion of Zeta’s knowledge base, growing with each transaction and data point. Zack Gharib highlighted this, emphasizing how Athena's ability to identify previously unseen opportunities is a direct consequence of the platform's ever-evolving algorithm. It is important to note that Athena does not attempt to fundamentally "fix" campaigns - rather, it improves a client's current campaign activity by providing suggestions and insights.