Executives from Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) outlined the company’s shift toward commerce media and its expectations for renewed growth during a presentation at the iAccess Alpha Virtual Best Ideas Spring Investment Conference 2026.
Commerce media focus and how Fluent’s product works
CEO Don Patrick described Fluent as a customer acquisition company that drives new consumers to major brands. He said the company’s newer offering is built for “commerce media,” which he characterized as a fast-growing segment of digital advertising that can create incremental revenue for retail and other transaction-driven partners.
Why Fluent says commerce media is growing
Patrick said commerce media is viewed as a “third transformative wave” in digital advertising, following search and paid social. He highlighted three perceived advantages versus other channels:
- More precise targeting using first-party data: Patrick said commerce partners often have richer information about shoppers (for example, repeat visitors or rewards members), enabling more personalized, “one-to-one” style marketing than segmentation-based approaches on other platforms.
- Fewer privacy-related headwinds: He said the consumer chooses to visit the commerce site and browse products, which he argued can reduce compliance and privacy concerns compared with other forms of digital targeting.
- Potential to improve the shopper experience: Patrick said relevant offers can be additive for consumers and may strengthen a retailer’s relationship with customers.
Business model, revenue sharing, and partner economics
Patrick said Fluent’s technology is integrated into commerce partners’ sites, contributing to what he called a “sticky” relationship. He added that contracts tend to run two to five years and are typically structured as revenue share arrangements, which he said makes the business more predictable because Fluent can evaluate partner traffic patterns, seasonality, and promotional cycles.
He illustrated the revenue share with an example: if an advertiser paid Fluent $100 for a consumer acquisition event, Fluent might share $60 with the commerce partner and retain $40, with the margin described as fixed over the life of the contract. Patrick added that for a retailer with roughly 15 million transactions annually, the model could generate an incremental $3 million to $6 million in bottom-line revenue without additional shipping or cost-of-goods expenses.
Pivot from legacy owned-and-operated model and growth metrics
Patrick said Fluent has operated for roughly 15 years and historically drove consumers to its own websites before connecting them to advertisers. He said the company built a proprietary first-party data asset over time, describing “hundreds of millions” of U.S. consumers and “billions” of campaign data points that inform how different audiences respond to offers.
He said Fluent “pivoted” aggressively in early 2023 after an FTC settlement that included a “very small nominal fine” but imposed additional requirements that, in his view, made the legacy business less competitive. Patrick said Fluent redirected its data and consumer-experience capabilities toward the commerce media product as the market expanded.
According to Patrick, the commerce media business started from scratch in early 2023 and reached a $105 million annual run-rate in about three years. He said Fluent doubled the commerce media business from 2024 to 2025 and expects “high double-digit” growth into 2026, which he said could return the company to consolidated double-digit growth with improving margins and operating profit.
Financial discussion: mix shift, seasonality, and margin expectations
CFO Ryan Perfit said Fluent’s consolidated revenue declined from 2022 through 2025, while the commerce media segment was scaling in the background. He said 2025 was the year Commerce Media Solutions became meaningful, noting it represented more than 50% of the company’s business in the fourth quarter and that management expects it to remain above 50% going forward.
Perfit also discussed seasonality, describing large fourth-quarter increases followed by step-downs in the first quarter. He said the commerce media segment’s share of total revenue in the fourth quarter rose from 10% in 2023 to 26% in 2024 to 56% in 2025, and that Q4 2025 grew 101% from the prior year.
On profitability, Perfit contrasted the legacy owned-and-operated (O&O) business with commerce media. He said the legacy model involves buying media and taking inventory risk, and he cited gross margins in the low 20% range for that segment. For commerce media, he said Fluent generally locks in a media margin of roughly 35% to 40% through revenue share arrangements, though he noted near-term incentives and guarantees can reduce reported margins. Over time, he said management expects commerce media margins to trend into the high 20% range and potentially the low 30% range by 2027.
Management also discussed expansion into additional verticals and adjacent placements. Patrick said Fluent began with retail partners and has moved into ticketing, grocery, and restaurants, and noted a new entry into travel with Wyndham Hotels as a first win in January. He said the company is also exploring opportunities beyond post-checkout, including CRM and loyalty as well as pre-checkout placements, with more updates expected later in the year as the company tests and scales new solutions.
About Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT)
Fluent, Inc is a performance marketing and customer acquisition platform that helps consumer brands drive leads and sales through data-driven digital campaigns. The company specializes in direct-response marketing, executing campaigns across multiple channels including email, display, paid search, social media and native advertising. By focusing on measurable outcomes such as cost per acquisition and return on ad spend, Fluent tailors solutions to meet the specific objectives of its clients.
The company’s proprietary technology leverages first-party data sourced from its network of consumer-facing digital properties and programmatic partnerships.
