Fluent, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you for joining us to discuss Fluent's fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings results. With me today are Fluent's Chief Executive Officer, Don Patrick, Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Perfect, and Chief Strategy Officer, Ryan Schuelke. Our call today will begin with comments from Don and Ryan Perfect, followed by a question and answer session. I would like to remind you that this call is being webcast live and recorded. Additionally, there's a slide presentation that accompanies today's remarks, which can be accessed via the webcast and is also available on Fluent's website. A replay of the event will also be made available following the call on Fluent's website. To access the webcast and slide presentation, please visit the investor relations page at www.fluetco.com. Before we begin, I would like to advise listeners that certain information discussed by management during this conference call will contain forward looking statements covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward looking statements made during this call only speak as of the date hereof. Actual results could differ materially from those stated and implied by such forward looking statements due to risk and uncertainties associated with the company's business. These statements may be identified by words such as expects, plans, projects, could, will, estimates, and other words of similar meaning. The company undertakes no obligation to update information provided on this call. For discussion of the risk and uncertainties associated with Fluent's business, we encourage you to view the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. During the call, management will also present non-GAAP financial information relating to median margin, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income. Management evaluates the financial performance of the company's business on a variety of indicators, including these non-GAAP metrics. The definition of these metrics and reconciliations to the most directly Comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the earnings press release issued earlier today. With that, I'm pleased to introduce Fluent's CEO, Don Patrick.

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today.

I'm here with Ryan Schuelke, our chief strategy officer and company co-founder, and Ryan Perfect, our chief financial officer. Three years ago, we made a deliberate and decisive strategic choice to aggressively invest in pivoting our business into the high growth commerce media industry, leveraging the competitive advantages of our owned and operated marketplaces as our foundation. We've made significant progress on the strategic pivot over the last 12 months, capped off by key milestones for this business. Commerce Media Solutions contributed 56% of total Q4 revenue, more than doubling from 26% in Q4 2024. Building on this success, we entered 2026 with strong momentum that is accelerating. We have built a highly differentiated Fluent brand with a clear and compelling purpose, delivering superior, measurable performance outcomes for our commerce partners and advertisers. And in the process, we are being recognized as the market leader in our industry. We are no longer a company in transition. We are a company that has reached a transformative inflection point, and we are confident our best days are ahead of us. In today's earnings release, we reported Q4 in full year 2025 results that reflect significant progress in our commerce media transformation. Commerce Media Solutions delivered nearly 2x revenue growth over 2024, a powerful demonstration of our market validation and competitive differentiation. A recap on Q4 2025 consolidated financial results were as follows. Revenue of $61.8 million, an increase of 31% versus Q3 2025. median margin of $19.1 million, an increase of 49% versus Q3 2025, an adjusted EBITDA of $0.2 million, an increase of $3.6 million from Q3 2025, and representing 0.3% of Q4 revenue. Our Q4 performance achieved the roadmap we laid out in previous earnings releases. Commerce Media Solutions continued to accelerate, adding new commerce partners in the quarter and more than doubling revenue year-over-year, while also expanding our media margin on a sequential basis. That marked strong double to triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth for Commerce Media Solutions for eight consecutive quarters. That trend represents our strategic and financial trajectory. and we expect strong double-digit year-over-year growth to continue throughout 2026. Full-year 2025 financial results were as follows. Revenue of $208.8 million, reflecting a top-line decline of 18% versus 2024, consistent with our deliberate managed transition away from our legacy revenue streams. Gross profit of $51.2 million, a decrease of 15.8% versus 2024. An adjusted EBITDA loss of $9 million, representing negative 4.3% of revenue. The most powerful validation of the strategy is in the numbers. As I mentioned before, in Q4 2025, Commerce Media Solutions contributed 56% to total consolidated revenue. representing more than 50% of total company revenue for the first time since the launch of this business in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 26% in Q4 2024 and 10% in Q4 2023. And we expect that share to continue to grow in 2026. In full year 2025, Commerce Media Solutions delivered revenue growth of 99% year over year and media margin growth of 48% year-over-year. These results confirm three things. First, we are establishing our brand equity and operating in a large, long-term growth market. Second, our differentiated approach is resonating with our commerce partners and advertisers who continue to join our proven business model. And third, The strong performance we deliver is real and repeatable as we continue to establish leadership credentials in our segment. Industry growth projections position us favorably for growth in the U.S. market. According to a recent McKinsey study, the U.S. commerce media market is expected to grow a compounded average growth rate of 21 percent from 2023 to 2027. and reach a total market value of 100 billion by 2027. As of December 31st, 2025, Commerce Media Solutions is operating an annual run rate of 105 million. And as you can see, we believe there is significant opportunity to increase our market share as this high growth industry continues to evolve and we expand our geographical presence. Putting it simply, Media partners and advertisers want to work with Fluent because Fluent delivers the best results. This is demonstrated by the impressive network of partners and advertisers that leverage our offerings. We continue to expand our relationships with leading names across diverse industries and market verticals. We deliver strategic validation by way of our financial performance, and we continue to look and plan forward as we do so. We are investing with discipline in commerce media strategic adjacencies that will further differentiate the Fluent brand, elevate our industry leadership position, earn us more partnerships, all while providing long-term margin accretion. We've discussed on previous earning calls that we have existing partners who have a need to expand into loyalty and pre-checkout. Although it is early stage, These adjacent solutions open additional large market opportunities that not only strengthen our existing relationships, but meaningfully raises the bar for new partners evaluating who in the commerce media truly understands the full customer journey and where the market is headed. In turn, we're making targeted, purposeful investments designed to extend our competitive vote in commerce media for years to come. We are very excited about these opportunities on our roadmap. They represent significant upside to Fluent's strategic and financial growth plan. More to follow here in future investor updates. On our owned and operated businesses, we are clear-eyed and deliberate. Given our commitment to play an industry leadership role in traffic quality, coupled with the inherent compliance headwinds in that segment, we are repositioning owned and operated with a focused two-part mandate. Number one, gross profit generator, maintaining a profitable capital efficient contribution to the enterprise. And number two, a test and learn engine, a real time proving ground that sharpens and feeds our commerce media strategy and product development. Narrowing our focus reflects our conviction that the commerce media market represents an enormous multi-year strategic opportunity, that concentrating our resources in our highest conviction business is the right decision for our shareholders. In doing so, we are also quite excited in validating that our owned and operated business is not only a core asset, but a competitive advantage in fueling our commerce media growth. Our commerce media growth continues to be validated by the strength of our partnerships with premier brands and companies, and the addition of key talent that has helped us to maximize performance and efficiency as we continue to scale. During 2025, we added several new partners across a variety of exciting verticals. Among the highlights, we partnered with a number of world-class brands, including Authentic Brands Group, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Michaels. We also launched Rebuy Monetize powered by Fluent, which brings Fluent's AI-powered advertiser marketplace and demand generation expertise to merchants on the Shopify platform. And our new business pipeline remains strong and growing. We look forward to announcing additional partnerships throughout 2026. On the talent side, we have built a world-class product and tech team focused on accelerating AI innovation for our commerce media offerings. Adrian Stack, our chief product officer, and his team bring years of experience as strategic product management to the Fluent team and are driving Fluent's investments in data infrastructure and product innovation. Virginia Marsh joined Fluent in Q2 in conjunction with our partnership with Databricks. to expand and enhance our data collaboration capabilities, coming on as head of data and agencies to scale our data monetization and further support our overall growth. These partnerships and additions to our team reflect our commitment to earning an industry-leading position with Commerce Media and allowed us to nearly double revenue and scale from 60 million annual run rate to 105 million annual run rate at year end. a commitment that required significant investments to build something durable and sustainable in a high-growth marketplace. The 2026 outlook we're sharing today is a direct payoff of that discipline and our strategic and financial resolve. With that, I'll turn it over to Ryan Perfect for a deeper look at our financials.

Thank you, Don, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I'll now provide a review of our fourth quarter results with some context on full year trends where relevant. Total consolidated revenue was $61.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with $65.4 million in the prior year period. Commerce Media Solutions delivered strong results. Revenue of $34.7 million represents 101% growth when compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. driven by continued strategic investments in the business and industry expansion. The 85% sequential growth from the third quarter was heavily influenced by a seasonal increase related to consumer spending around the holidays. CMS revenue contributed 56% of total consolidated revenue in the quarter, representing more than half of total consolidated revenue for the first time. In the fourth quarters of 2024 and 2023, Commerce Media Solutions represented 26 and 10% of total consolidated revenue respectively. For the full year, Commerce Media Solutions revenue totaled 82.3 million, 99% growth over 2024. And as of year end 2025, Commerce Media Solutions annual revenue run rate now exceeds 105 million, up from 85 million as of the end of the third quarter. Looking ahead, We expect Q4 to be a tipping point as we anticipate commerce media solutions will represent a majority of the consolidated revenue on a go-forward basis. As expected, revenue from our owned and operated business declined on a year-over-year basis as we continue to shift our focus towards scaling commerce media solutions. Media margin in the fourth quarter was $19.1 million, representing 31% of total consolidated revenue. compared with 16.5 million or 25% of revenue in the prior year period. Commerce Media Solutions media margin in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 10.4 million or 30% of Commerce Media Solutions revenue compared with 6.8 million or 39% of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024, but up sequentially from 25% in the third quarter of 2025. Commerce Media Solutions' gross profit margin of 33% was up from 22% in the third quarter and 18% in the second quarter of 2025, but included a $4.3 million one-time benefit related to an early termination settlement with a media partner. Of note, that benefit is excluded from media margin, so that non-GAAP measure is a more useful alternative for comparing operations in prior and future periods. We expect gross margin on commerce media solutions to normalize in subsequent quarters and ultimately return to the mid-20s over the course of 2026 as our newer partnerships move beyond early term incentive periods. On a GAAP basis, total operating expense in the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $15.4 million, compared with $16.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, operating expense totaled $61 million compared with $72.3 million in 2024, a decrease of 16% year over year. Interest expense in the fourth quarter decreased to $781,000 from $1 million in the prior year period, reflecting a lower daily average outstanding loan balance. We reported a net loss of $4.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared with the net loss of $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted net loss, a non-GAAP measure, was $2.8 million, equivalent to a loss of $0.09 per share, compared with an adjusted net loss of $3.3 million or a loss of $0.18 per share in the fourth quarter of 2024. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of approximately $200,000 in the quarter. compared with a loss of $1.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. This is consistent with our outlook of positive adjusted EBITDA in the quarter and reflects the progress of our strategic shift towards commerce media solutions and continued focus on expense discipline. As Don stated earlier on the call, with our current visibility, we believe that we are well positioned to deliver double-digit consolidated revenue growth on an aggregate continuing businesses and improved full-year adjusted EBITDA in 2026, supported by the continued growth of our commerce media business. Shifting now to our balance sheet, we ended 2025 with $12.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared with $9.4 million at the year-end 2024, and total net debt of $30.8 million at year-end, compared with $31.9 million at the end of 2024. Throughout 2025 and into 2026, we've made significant progress on strengthening our balance sheet and enhancing our liquidity. We've also taken a hard look at our portfolio to ensure we're allocating resources towards our strongest growth opportunities. During 2025, we raised over $19 million in equity capital, including a $10.3 million placement in August that introduced several new institutional investors into our shareholder base. This capital supported our continued investment in the growth of our commerce media business. In November, we entered into a new financing agreement that replaced our previous credit agreement. The new facility carries no financial covenants and provides expanded borrowing availability, which both significantly improved our financial flexibility. And most recently, in January 2026, we completed the sale of our Call Solutions business, a non-core subsidiary, which allows us to more effectively allocate our resources and invest further into the growth of Commerce Media Solutions. As noted previously, we are providing outlook on 2026 revenue from continuing businesses, which do not include the Call Solutions business. As we move through 2026, we remain focused on maintaining financial flexibility and liquidity to support the continued growth of Commerce Media Solutions. as we work towards improved profitability. With that, I'll turn it back over to Don.

We believe 2026 marks the year of our financial trend line will begin to shift, marked by double-digit growth on an aggregate continuing businesses. Our 2026 outlet reflects, one, return to year-over-year revenue growth driven by a strategic transition validating our partners are recognizing our value and ending a multi-year period of managed top-line decline. And two, we'll maintain gross margins in comparable periods increasing to the mid-20s over the course of 2026. We believe these are financial signatures of a business that has fundamentally repositioned itself for durable, profitable growth as a lead brand in a high-growth, high-margin marketplace. Taking into account the divestiture of our call solutions unit, we expect relatively flat year-over-year total company revenue in Q1. From there, revenue will accelerate to double-digit year-over-year growth in the second half, with aggregate revenue from continuing businesses achieving double-digit revenue growth for the full year 2026. Concerning profitability, We've made the strategic decision to focus on investing more capital into our growth in the near term. As such, we are revising our adjusted EBITDA target for the full year. And while we no longer expect to be adjusted EBITDA positive in 2026, we do expect improved adjusted EBITDA when compared to 2025. To summarize, We achieved a key milestone and surpassed a significant inflection point in 2025 for the growth of our commerce media solutions business. We built a highly differentiated brand and a platform that will deliver sustainable and measurable performance for our partners and for Fluent. And in 2026, with the continued strategic shift of our mix into commerce media, our financial results are beginning to reflect the potential of the strategy that we've been executing. The trend line has shifted. The momentum is real. We are energized by what lies ahead. We can now open the call for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press star 11 again. We also ask that you wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your questions. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question of the day will be coming from the line of Maria Ripps of Canaccord. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. You talked about sort of adding AI-based functionality to your rebuy partnership. Can you talk a little bit about that and sort of will that be rolled out by default to all the merchants that you work with currently? or what sort of the rollout process look like, and how incremental can this be over time? And then maybe more broadly, can you talk about sort of this partnership for you and how sort of productive and successful it's been for you since you started working together?

Great. Thanks for the question, Maria. So regarding AI, we have had AI embedded into our solutions here at Fluent for a long time in terms of how does it and continue to drive better performance for us. Underlying all those AI models has been our proprietary first-party data asset. And that is really what I'll call our secret sauce to driving superior results. So the AI models combined with that first-party data obviously is what we believe is our competitive advantage and why we drive superior results. So what we rolled out to rebuy was the standard across all of our enterprise clients and also the rebuy clients. So the great news is whatever we work on across the platform goes across all of our partners that we're working with. The one area that we have been working more diligently on is sort of embedding AI into all our workflows. to create, obviously, competitive mode and drive more efficiency. I'm sure you read it and see it when you talk to all the companies you work with, Maria. It is just dramatic how fast things are changing and how quickly you can make huge productivity improvements and huge speed to market on new capabilities. And with that has been sort of our focus on hygienic AI with fast ROI, making sure that's embedded into our processes and So we can not only move faster and quicker and accelerate, but also drive better operating leverage across our platform. And then you asked a question about rebuy. Rebuy was our first strategic partnership that got us into the Shopify ecosystem. Our traditional sales and traditional focus had been on what I'll call enterprise partners, things like direct big brands like Dick's Sporting Goods, Bath & Body Works, et cetera. Rebuy was our way to go indirect with them into their clients that are on the Shopify platform. And we've integrated our technology. We've worked really well together from a marketing perspective. And I think there's lots of opportunities to continue to grow that partnership. So we're very pleased on the success that we've made there. And Rebuy has been a fantastic partner to work with in terms of both product and technology, but also in terms of evolving the strategic ability to drive better results for both our clients.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then, Donna, I also wanted to follow up on your point about convergence between your ONO and commerce media capabilities. Can you maybe talk about that a little bit? I guess what are some sort of capabilities or functionality that would enable that? And is that sort of client-driven or just sort of how are you thinking about that? And also, how incremental can this be over time for you?

Yeah, it's a great question, Maria, and it's obviously one that hopefully you heard a lot of excitement on this call about and also the previous call. So, you know, our legacy business, the owned and operated, has been interacting with consumers and connecting them world-class brands for 15 years. So that amount of data that we have both on what I'll call first-party self-declared data and but equally important, what I'll call second-party campaign data, things that happen after we connect in as a world-class brand and how those audiences react and how they are best used and how to best provide the right offer at the right time to the right audience. So it really enables and opens up our ability to drive unique, very valuable audience sets across different types of of media partners. So obviously, if you're Dick's Sporting Goods, consumer buying something, and then you're a Belk consumer on the website, still retail, but obviously very different audiences. And that skill set that we've honed over 15 years in own and operate allows us to move quickly, to understand that audience, work with the advertisers to bid so they get the right return on ad spend, and then drive the health of that marketplace for both our partners and for our advertisers. So it has come to be a huge competitive advantage to us as we scale our platform. We have to get new advertisers into our network, and that type of skill set has been an absolute competitive advantage this past year.

Great. Thank you for the call.

Thanks, Maria.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is coming from the line of Patrick Shaw of Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just maybe kind of a clarification on your expectations for 2026 on the commerce media side. You know, I guess with the early contract termination that you called out in the release, can you provide a little bit more color on expectations around churn and retention and maintaining margins on the commerce media side just for the next few years, I guess?

Sure. Thanks, Pat. Thanks for the question. So where we've been very consistent is that we have said that from a consolidated revenue perspective that Fluent will return to double-digit growth on a aggregate continuing businesses, which means without call solutions, the sale of call solutions this year. So we have been very consistent over the past couple quarters that we will return to double-digit growth on the top line. With that early termination, the growth on commerce media is still expected to be significant. It's very strong double-digit growth. but we originally said we were going to double that, and we brought that down because of that early termination. We have a very strong pipeline. It's growing aggressively. We feel good that we can over-deliver on that, but as the visibility we see today, that's the expectations that we'll have very strong double-digit growth on commerce media year over year. On the margin perspective, we have talked about these adjacent solutions, Pat, You know, we mentioned loyalty. We've mentioned pre-check. There's some significant bigger opportunities along with those that our existing partners and our new partners are asking us to get into. So we are very diligently investing in those areas that will continue, that will bring significant growth towards, it's going to be more into the 2027 timeframe, but we'll have pilots going on. We'll have growth and scale. And as we scale that, the margins will improve. But we'll see that in the 2027 timeframe. But there's, you know, commerce media is evolving so fast. There's so many strategic and financial opportunities in front of us. And we are taking what we believe is our leadership position in post-transaction, which is the hardest area to get into and most important area in terms of the consumer transactional moment. And we're taking that and we're leveraging things in adjacent to continue to grow aggressively. We think the opportunity to build a very significant large company is beyond what we thought a year ago.

Okay. And then maybe just, I guess, more along the lines of like the macro environment. Can you maybe talk about like how, you know, any, how that's sort of impacting companies the ability to bring in additional advertisers and, you know, any issues around, like, diversity of advertisers and frequency on customers or on consumers, I mean?

Yeah, it's a good question, Pat. And obviously, given what's going on in the world with everything, there's a lot of change and a lot of things that are moving. Last year, we had to deal a lot with the tariffs and Obviously with the war and the things like that, we obviously have a lot of changes. I'll hit the partner side first. On the partners, you know the incremental benefit that this brings to a media partner. So for any retailer or any strong vertical like ticketing or groceries that are looking for incremental revenue, this remains a top priority. that growth in the post-transaction business we think is just going to continue to accelerate. On the advertiser side, we have not seen any pushback on pricing. We do see ROAS, return on ad spend, changes between different partners move at various points in time, but we have not yet seen anything, even from our gaming advertisers that are in Israel, any real pullback from a return on ad spend relative to what we saw in 2025. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks, Pat. Thank you. One moment for the next question, please. Our next question is coming from the line of David Marsh of Singular Research. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the quarter. Good job here. Just wanted to start, you know, I would say particularly great job on the SG&A side. Is this, you know, is this a good run rate going forward that we could kind of rely on, what you were able to print this year?

Hi, Dave. Yeah, this is Ryan. Perfect. We did a lot of work on kind of reducing costs and being efficient in 2025. I think we're going to maintain that kind of outlook and perspective and try to minimize costs as much as possible. That said, as we expand commerce media solutions, we're necessarily going to need to invest into development of new products that Don's been talking about. and the management of that business. So, you know, we will expect cost to step up, but, you know, we've taken other steps such as divesting the cost solutions business that will help us maintain kind of low OPEX over the year.

Right. That's good to hear. And then on the gross margin side, really great job in the quarter. And this is the highest gross margin you guys had in quite some time. I mean, When you look at where the business is now and the run rate as it grows, what do you think is a realistic kind of longer-term goal for gross margins for the business overall and, I guess, commerce media in particular?

I'll take this question again, Dave. I want to point out that in Q4, per ASC 705, we booked the net settlement as a benefit to cost of revenue. So the gross margins are not necessarily representative of what they were in prior quarters or future quarters. But it was a good quarter for us overall. You can see media margin was up, and that's, you know, another way to judge it because that does not include any one-time items because of its non-GAAP measure. So, adjusted EBITDA and media margin are more representative. That said, you know, I think Don was earlier mentioning that We do believe there will be some tightening as we kind of expand into different touch points in the commerce media environment, but we expect for it to expand over time. So I would expect us to get up into the mid-20s in gross margin towards the back half of the year and then further expansion in 2027.

Got it. Thanks. And then just on the competitive landscape, I mean, you guys have talked about this a good bit, not really seeing a ton of major players in this space. Do you have a sense that there are people that do want to try to get into this space? And how heavy of a lift is it for someone to actually get into this space and compete with you guys?

It's a great question, Dave. So we have seen, as we've talked in the past, there's us and one other competitor that obviously is really going after the enterprise clients, right, which is a traditional enterprise sale, six to 12 months. You're selling it to the head of retail media networks or a CMO. It's a very strategic sale. And then you get the equivalent of two to five-year contracts that that are very predictable and very long-standing. The ones that have come in tend to be more on what I'll call the Shopify ecosystem, the D2C, the smaller end range that quite honestly doesn't have what I'll call the enterprise grade platform that you need. If you're going to be with these large clients, you need SOC 2 compliance, you need ISO compliance, you need all sorts of significant investments from a platform to get there. So the ones that have been coming in have been less of a concern for us. They've been sort of on the smaller end and really competing when we go, again, when we have the rebuy partnership and where we are. But there are a lot of players out there. I'm sure you saw a little bit around Trade Desk possibly working with ChatGBT, and there's people that are talking about how do you bring shopping into different environments and different and that's sort of where we tend to, you know, that's some of these investments that we're talking about and how do we continue to build our competitive moat around a solution that's not just post-transaction but also integrated across loyalty and other areas. And we think that's going to be our ability to not only enhance our competitive positioning but also create a moat against anyone else that could come in. The biggest thing right now in the market is that, you know, Most of the big, large ad tech companies want to come at this in a programmatic way, meaning they want to buy advertisers on a demand platform that's all programmatic and you're not working directly with the advertisers. Our business model is very direct. We work hand-in-hand with the advertisers because they're paying up a significant, sometimes as much as five to ten times what they would pay in other digital advertising services because of the value of those consumers. So proving out the value, the ROAS, how to best position, how to build the right audience right now has continued to bend, is one of our core competencies of that legacy business and why we think we are gathering market share and growth here.

Great, great color. Thanks so much. Appreciate you guys taking the questions.

Thanks, David.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of Bill DeZellum of Tentenon Capital Market. Your line is open.

Well, operator, I'll help you out here. That's Bill DeZellum with Tietan Capital Management. Thank you. My first question Don and Ryan, is tied to the commerce media business. And as you look out in 2026 versus 2025, what sort of revenue growth range are you thinking is reasonable at this point?

From a CMS, from a commerce media bill, yeah, we doubled the business from 24 to 25. And we are now saying that we are going to grow strong double digits from 25 to 26 for commerce media. That really comes down to the two things that we talked about. One, the difference between doubling it again this year and the strong double digits has been that early termination with that one media partner. And I think that's the biggest impact that we see here in terms of what it could drive. And it's also allowing us to some investments that we're making in some other adjacent areas that will certainly be creating longer-term opportunities, but it will take some of the growth away in 2026.

And strong double digits, would you like to bracket that with some numbers?

Greater than 50% and lower than 100, Bill.

All right. That's certainly a number. That's fair. And equally importantly tied to this, how would you characterize the pipeline of future opportunities versus a year ago? I know in general, you said it was strong, but would you compare versus a year ago, please?

Yeah. Great question, Bill. So I We talk about having a differentiated brand, right? There's another big, large company that's been in this industry for a long time, and we now have a differentiated position with clear competitive advantage around driving better results that not only do we believe, but equally important, our partners believe and also our prospects believe. So that doesn't mean that we win every deal. Obviously, there's room There's lots of growth for the other company has a very strong tech play. It's a very good SaaS play. And if you're looking for that type of thing, there's room for them. And there's lots of growth for both sides. So I would tell you the big differentiated position is our brand and how our partners are looking at us. When we come in the room, they know what we're known for. They know how we can drive better performance. They know how we can expand beyond post-transactions. where, you know, we've only started this business, you know, three years. The last year at this time, it still was proving out our results and how we perform. So I think that's the biggest piece. I think the second is that we're, you know, a lot of our partners are now saying, I need to continue to grow. Where else can you help me grow and where can you bring you know, a broader result across all of my commerce media interaction with my consumer, and how can I power that? So the ability to be much more strategic and to be much more relevant is the other big play. When you're selling post-transaction, it's a great incremental – it's a very important incremental P&L for a company, but when we start to get into the other sites and we can start to give – Connections between how a consumer works on post-transaction versus loyalty versus other areas, that's when we start to become a much more strategic partner. So it's both our brand and also the strategic conversations and the opportunities that are in front of us.

And you had alluded to in response to a prior question that the market potential looks significantly greater to you today than what you were thinking a year ago. Is that specifically tied to these adjacent opportunities that you were just referencing, or is there something else going on there?

I think it's a combination of both those adjacencies, but also how fast commerce media is evolving, Bill. So I think there's, you know, there's a, it's still a relatively low penetrated market. So we have a lot of tailwinds coming from more penetration across that. And so that's number one. And then number two is you're starting to see these adjacencies that we can sell alongside of it, which obviously opens up our market share.

And you alluded at a high level to these adjacent opportunities. Would you like to take this opportunity to talk in more detail about those opportunities and which ones are larger than the others and why?

I would love to, Bill, but I think these are huge opportunities that will strengthen our strategic and our financial position. We're being deliberately quiet on the details here because for competitive reasons, simple as foamers is that. And also, they're a couple quarters away. So we're going to talk more about these things as we test and learn. We prove it out. It's a model that Fluent has done for 15 years. We understand, we test and learn, we understand how the consumer works, we figure out how the monetization, and then we scale aggressively. And that's obviously where we're going to go. And we're very excited to talk about that. When we do bring those up, you know, after the Q2, after Q2, we'll have much more to say in terms of the opportunities and the strength where we think we can grow here.

Great. Thank you. And then one additional question tied to that, if I may please. When you think about the revenue potential from some of these different areas, some of these different adjacent opportunities, not in aggregate, the adjacent opportunities, but individually, do you see any of them that on their own would be larger than the than the post sale as we know it today?

Yes. Yep, the ones we're going after, Bill, some of them are equal to the size of post-transaction from a total available market in the U.S., and a couple of them are a magnitude of that.

Then does the implication of that, that every one of these opportunities are at minimum as large as the post-transaction as we know it today?

I think generally, yes, there's a couple. There's maybe one that's a little bit smaller, but where we're putting these together, Bill, is from the strategic perspective of the consumer and how can we inform our partners on the consumer experience across important parts of their commerce media where the moment is the most important. We believe that we will be able to do that in a way that's incredibly meaningful for the partner and create significant value for them, and at the same time, create significant growth opportunities for Fluent.

Okay, I'm really intrigued here, so my apologies for squeaking in another question. When you look at the sales cycle for these adjacent opportunities, Do you anticipate it to be similar or is it going to take longer than the post-sale or is the benefit so obvious and the trust that you're generating with the post-sale that it'll be a much faster cycle?

Great question, Bill. And I'd be disappointed if you didn't sneak another question in. So number one is, obviously, we have a growing and large list of existing partners. So cross-selling our existing post-transaction into these other adjacent solutions does not take as long, right? It's not a long sales cycle. And we have built up a brand, a relationship, and results with them. So from existing partners, we think that we'll be able to get we'll get a much shorter sales cycle. And then with our new partners that we're obviously bringing on, and we anticipate bringing on a lot of new partners in 2026, we've already brought on two already that we announced in Q1. One was Wyndham, which was our first entrance into travel. The other one was Squire, which is a commercial marketplace. But as we bring on more, what we're finding is that we're obviously talking about the broader vision and where our solutions fit. And so the conversation then gets into where do I start, what's the best way to start up, and how do I build this over time? So there'll be ability to, you know, where now when we win a post-transaction client, for the most part, we get 100% of the market that they have immediately. What we're hoping is that with these additional solutions, We'll still get 100% of that post-transaction, but then we'll be able to provide significant growth amongst our existing partners beyond that post-transaction.

That's very helpful. And then relative to the owned and operated, revenues were flat to slightly up this quarter versus the third quarter. What is that signaling to us?

Bill, I think, as we mentioned, and I hope everybody hears this, that owned and operated is our competitive advantage. That's how we win. That's how we drive better performance. That's how we enable our commerce media to be differentiated. And as Maria said, there's a convergence happening around how we can bring that rewarded infrastructure and thought process into the commerce media. I would take nothing away from it being flat bill. We obviously continue to bring those resources into commerce to help drive the bigger, larger market that we're going after, and quite honestly, a much more valuable market, right? So if we, you know, if we, you know, we got, we divested call solutions for the exact same challenge, which is we really needed to focus on this opportunity in front of us and on the owned and operated market. We're not asking them to grow that business and we expect it to continue to decline. But what you'll see is that asset being really brought into the commerce media to be a competitive advantage for us.

Great. Thank you. Congratulations on a solid quarter and for allowing all the questions.

Yeah. Thanks, Bill.

Thank you. And this does conclude the Q&A session. I would like to turn the call. Over to Don Patrick for close remarks. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you for joining the call today. As we discussed, we achieved a key milestone and surpassed a significant inflection point in 2025 with the growth of the commerce media solutions being greater than 50%. You know, in three short years, we built a highly differentiated brand and a platform that delivers sustainable and measurable performance for our partners. and affluent. And we're very excited for 2026 and look forward to updating everyone after Q1. Thank you for joining.

This concludes today's program. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.