Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS) & Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) Head-To-Head Survey

Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS) and Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Risk & Volatility

Integral Ad Science has a beta of 1.59, meaning that its stock price is 59% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Fluent has a beta of 1.28, meaning that its stock price is 28% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Integral Ad Science and Fluent’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Integral Ad Science	7.91%	4.45%	4.03%
Fluent	-11.69%	-97.82%	-24.66%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Integral Ad Science and Fluent”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Integral Ad Science	$530.10 million	3.24	$37.79 million	$0.28	36.57
Fluent	$229.84 million	0.23	-$29.28 million	($1.15)	-1.63

Integral Ad Science has higher revenue and earnings than Fluent. Fluent is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Integral Ad Science, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

95.8% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 23.3% of Fluent shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.0% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 43.5% of Fluent shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for Integral Ad Science and Fluent, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Integral Ad Science	0	14	0	0	2.00
Fluent	0	1	0	0	2.00

Integral Ad Science presently has a consensus target price of $11.52, indicating a potential upside of 12.52%. Fluent has a consensus target price of $2.50, indicating a potential upside of 33.69%. Given Fluent’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Fluent is more favorable than Integral Ad Science.

Summary

Integral Ad Science beats Fluent on 10 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science Holding Corp. operates as a digital advertising verification company in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Japan, India, and the Nordics. The company provides IAS Signal, a cloud-based technology platform that offers return on ad spend needs; and deliver independent measurement and verification of digital advertising across devices, channels, and formats, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, social, display, and video. Its digital media quality solutions offer ad fraud detection and prevention, viewability, brand safety and suitability, contextual targeting, inventory yield management, and reporting. In addition, the company offers Quality Impressions, a metric designed to verify that digital ads are served to a real person rather than a bot, viewable on-screen, and presented in a brand-safe and suitable environment in the correct geography; Context Control solution that delivers contextual targeting and brand suitability capabilities; pre-bid programmatic and post-bid verification solutions for advertisers; and optimization and verification solutions for publishers. It serves advertisers and agencies, publishers, and supply side platforms. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

About Fluent

Fluent, Inc. provides data-driven digital marketing services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Fluent and All Other segments. It offers customer acquisition services by operating digital marketing campaigns, through which the company connects its advertiser clients with consumers. The company also delivers data and performance-based marketing executions to various consumer brands, direct marketers, and agencies across a range of industries, including financial products and services, media and entertainment, health and life sciences, retail and consumer, and staffing and recruitment. Fluent, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in New York, New York.