Participants

Donald Patrick; Chief Executive Officer; Fluent Inc

Ryan Schulke; Chairman of the Board, Chief Strategy Officer; Fluent Inc

Maria Ripps; Analyst; Canaccord Genuity

Patrick Sholl; Anlayts; Barrington Research Associates.

Willam Dezellem; Analyst; Tieton Capital Management

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome. Thank you for joining us to discuss Fluent's fourth quarter and year-end 2024 Earnings Results. With me today are Fluent's, Chief Executive Officer, Don Patrick; Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Perfit; and Chief Strategy Officer, Ryan Schulke.
Our call today will begin with comments from Don and Ryan Perfit, followed by a question-and-answer session. I would like to remind you that this call is being webcast live and recorded. Additionally there is 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.fluentco.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 or implied by such forward-looking statements, due to risks 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 the information provided on this call.
For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with Fluent's business, we encourage you to review 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 certain non-GAAP financial information relating to the media 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 definitions of these metrics and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure are provided in the earnings press release issued earlier today.
With that, I'm pleased to introduce Fluent's CEO, Don Patrick.

Donald Patrick

Good morning. Thank you all for joining our call today. I'm here together with Ryan Schulke, our Chief Strategy Officer and company Co-Founder; and Ryan Perfit, our Chief Financial Officer.
Our key focus is to reinforce why we are confident in our strategic commitment to win in the rapidly growing commerce media industry. We achieved 139% growth in Commerce Media Solutions revenue in the fourth quarter compared to Q4 2023 and 284% growth for the full year.
As of December 31, 2024, our Commerce Media Solutions business surpassed an annual revenue run rate calculated as explained in our earnings press release in excess at $60 million, up from $50 million as of September 31, 2024.
And we continue to expand our model and grow market share. We are confident that this momentum will continue. We expect strong, year-over-year, triple-digit revenue growth continuing throughout 2025.
The key driver of this growth has been our growing list of major brands that see our value proposition and continue to join our roster of partners and advertisers. In 2024, we announced several key partnerships with leading brands during the fiscal year with significantly more in the pipeline as we move into fiscal 2025.
Our strategic plan is grounded in shifting our business mix to the Commerce Media Solutions, where we've invested our financial and human resources to win big. That focus has our post-transaction business building strong brand equity in the marketplace, substantiated by our triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth in every quarter of 2024.
Of strategic significance and affluent competitive differentiator, we are providing tremendous value to consumers, partners and advertisers with margins that are accretive to our consolidated business. And while we're confident that we are on a sustainable path, every winning strategy comes with an investment cost, which we've recognized in our financial performance throughout fiscal year 2024.
As we invested in growing Commerce Media Solutions, we've also embarked on a parallel path, contracting our larger nucleus of owned and operated properties to focus on fewer targeted businesses that we find strategically compelling in the longer-term.
And as we continue to stabilize and ultimately strengthen our owned and operated market-based position against businesses we can grow, Q4 revenue and media margins were negatively impacted by significant increases in media costs on the biddable platforms.
The key driver here was the enormous social media advertising spend, driven by the US presidential election, which significantly affected our ability to buy media at acceptable margins. So we consciously chose not to chase this volume until media pricing came back to more traditional levels post-election.
But make no mistake, we still maintain our leadership position in owned and operated marketplace and provides us market credibility and unique client access based on those capabilities we bring to market and at a level that is effective, efficient and higher quality than any of our competitive set. Still this has cost us profitability in 2024 that we see as a required investment in our future.
Furthermore, as part of our broader strategic repositioning, we discontinued the ACA portion of our Call Solutions business. In Q4, adjustments made by insurance companies in response to widespread fraudulent activity in the government ACA marketplace, necessitated a $2.5 million non-recurring write-down of revenue to reflect this change in our estimate of accounts receivable. This write-down caused adjusted EBITDA to be negative for the quarter.
All this being said, the consolidated Q4 performance was a disappointment, particularly the continued industry-wide issues affecting Call Solutions. However, we see this as having no additional effect on our longer-term strategy to drive value through our strategic pivot to Commerce Media Solutions. We are confident in our ability to return to year-over-year double-digit consolidated revenue growth, profit growth and enhance our enterprise margins in 2025.
As we enter 2025, we are doing so with strategic clarity and momentum that continues to grow alongside a transformative near $50 billion marketplace. It is important to stand back and understand how our pivot significantly expands our addressable market.
According to Boston Consulting Group, the commerce media industry is estimated at a total value of over $50 billion as expected to reach our $100 billion over the next five years, accounting for over 25% of all digital media spending as the market continues to evolve.
Importantly, we are now well grounded as an emerging leader in this explosive, high-growth market with significant upside. Over the last two years, we have successfully proven that we can adeptly enable and empower our commerce media partners to participate in this large and rapidly growing market and we are a proud reflection of the brands with whom we partner.
Here's a sample of some great companies in our commerce media network. Partnerships like these validate Fluent's products and are driving the growth of our Commerce Media Solutions business. We're honored to be working with such an impressive roster and media partners across diverse verticals including retail, grocery, ticketing and quick-serve restaurants.
Our line goals are consistent, as we aim to maximize revenue opportunities for our partners, increase conversion rate for advertisers and build more meaningful, high-quality experiences for our consumers.
To put our ongoing shift in business mix and perspective, in 2023, Commerce Media Solutions accounted for 4% of Fluent's consolidated revenue compared to 16% in 2024.
That trend line shift continued in Q4, where Commerce Media Solutions represented 26% of consolidated revenue, its strongest seasonal quarter. And we certainly expect this healthy growth to continue, as we've delivered triple-digit year-over-year percentage growth in Commerce Media segment since its inception.
This growth is supported by our proprietary first-party data that we collected over 14 years as a leader in the customer acquisition services via owned and operated marketplace, as well as embedded AI power technology that allows us to establish long-term contracts and mutually beneficial revenue share agreements with our commerce media partners.
Accordingly and as we continue to place our financial and human resources against our growth strategy, while owned and operated will continue to play a vital role in our business, revenue will continue to decrease as a percentage of sales as higher margin Commerce Media Solution revenue grows as advertisers lean into our higher-quality consumer engagement platform.
Before I turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Perfit, I wanted to provide a brief quarter-by-quarter comparison of the performance of our Commerce Media Solutions dating back to its launch in the first quarter of 2023.
As you can see in the graph on slide 7, our Commerce Media Solutions revenue has demonstrated exponential growth with steadily improving gross margins since this segment was launched in the first quarter of 2023. And the business, obviously, continues to represent a growing share of our consolidated revenue mix.
Looking ahead, we expect to see flat year-over-year consolidated revenue in the first half of 2025, primarily due to revenue declines related to the businesses we discontinued or shifted investment away from in 2024, as well as seasonality in the many e-commerce media verticals that we presently serve.
As we progress through the year, we expect the total company revenue growth will accelerate in the second half of 2025, driven by strong performance in our Commerce Media segment. The corresponding impact on the fiscal year will be significant as we expect to deliver double-digit year-over-year growth in Fluent consolidated revenue and gross profit.
We remain bullish about the momentum we've generated in our strategic pivot as we leverage the competitive advantages of our owned and operated marketplaces and accelerate into exciting and significant high-growth opportunity in the large and growing commerce media industry.
Importantly we are expanding our strategic value proposition to world-class partners beyond customer acquisition, delivering higher quality consumer engagement across the entire marketing funnel. As our strategic trend line continues in 2025, we believe shareholder value will follow.
And with that, I'll turn it to Ryan Perfit to provide more detail to our financial results.

Ryan Schulke

Thank you, Don, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I'll now provide some additional color on our Q4 and full year results. We generated revenue of $65.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, a decrease of 10% from prior year.
As Don mentioned in his remarks, we are intently focused on our strategic shift in revenue mix to Commerce Media. We believe this represents a significant opportunity for Fluent as more and more of our media partners and advertisers are turning to this dynamic advertising medium to maximize customer monetization and return on ad spend.
Commerce Media Solutions achieved triple-digit year-over-year growth to cap off an exceptional year for this business. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Commerce Media Solutions revenue increased 139% to $17.2 million over fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, Commerce Media Solutions revenue totaled $41.3 million, an increase of 284% over fiscal 2023.
And as Don mentioned, we anticipate triple-digit year-over-year growth rates to continue through 2025. With Commerce Media Solutions serving as a key driver for the year-over-year double-digit company-wide revenue growth that we expect in the back of the year.
As Don mentioned, while owned and operated revenue continues to stabilize, we expect revenue from this business to decrease and Commerce Media Solutions to become a larger portion of the overall revenue mix.
We saw a decrease in O&O revenue of 23% in the fourth quarter of 2024 when compared with the prior year period and a decrease in full year O&O revenue of 29% compared to full year 2023. Media margin in the fourth quarter was $16.5 million, which represents 25.3% of revenue compared to $24.2 million or 33.1% of revenue last year.
For the full year of 2024, media margin totaled $72.5 million, representing 28.5% of revenues compared with $91.3 million or 30.6% of revenues in 2023. Media margin was particularly low in the fourth quarter of 2024, due to two unrelated factors, the first being the previously mentioned ACA revenue write-off and the second being a function of increased media costs in our health insurance vertical in the Call Solutions business.
Our Commerce Media Solutions media margin in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $6.8 million or 39.3% of revenues compared with $1.3 million or 18.5% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2023, demonstrating strong growth in this business. On an annual basis, Commerce Media, media margin totaled $14.5 million or 35.1% compared with $912000 or 8.5% of revenues in 2023.
On a GAAP basis, total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2024 totaled $16.9 million, a decrease of $2.9 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. Full year 2024 total operating expenses totaled $72.3 million compared with $72.4 million in 2023.
We recognized no goodwill and intangible asset impairment charges in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, we recognized goodwill impairment charges of $1.3 million compared with $55.4 million in 2023. Additionally, we recognized impairment of intangible assets of $980000 in full year 2024 compared to no impairment of intangible assets in 2023.
Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2024 was negative $1.7 million compared with adjusted EBITDA of a positive $2.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. As Don stated in his remarks, we recorded an ACA-related write-off of accounts receivable and an equal offset of revenue of $2.5 million which draw adjusted EBITDA into negative territory for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year was negative $5.6 million compared with adjusted EBITDA of $6.8 million in 2023.
As we continue to drive our shift in revenue mix to focus on Commerce Media Solutions, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin to improve over time. The company cannot provide a reconciliation to expected net income or net loss as a percentage of revenue for 2025 due to the unknown effect timing and potential significance of certain operating costs and expenses, share-based compensation expense and the provision for or benefit from income taxes.
Interest expense in the fourth quarter increased to $1 million from $784000, primarily due to a higher average interest rate on our term loan with SLR compared to our term loan with Citizens Bank in the prior year period. For the full year, interest expense was $4.7 million compared with $3.2 million in 2023. We recognized an income tax benefit in the quarter of $1.9 million compared to income tax benefit of $667000 in the fourth quarter of 2023.
In the full year, we recognized an income tax benefit of $1.8 million and an effective tax rate of 5.8% compared with an income tax benefit of $116000 and effective tax rate of 0.2%. We reported a net loss of $3.4 million in the fourth quarter compared to net loss of $1.9 million in the prior year period and adjusted net loss a non-GAAP measure of $3.3 million equivalent to a loss of $0.18 per share compared with an adjusted net loss of $386000 or a loss of $0.03 per share in the fourth quarter of 2023.
For the full year, we reported net loss of $29. 3 million, compared with a net loss of $63.2 million in the full year of 2023, and an adjusted net loss of $18.5 million, or a loss of $1.14 per share, compared with adjusted net loss of $7.2 million, or a loss of $0.52 per share in 2023. Importantly, the full year of 2023 included goodwill impairment charges of approximately $55 million, which significantly impacted net income in this period.
Shifting now to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $10.7 million in cash and cash equivalents including restricted cash. Total debt as reflected on the balance sheet as of December 31, 2024 was $31.9 million, $1.4 million higher than the $30.5 million at December 31, 2023. As of December 31, 2024, we had an outstanding principal balance of $31.5 million on our credit facility with SLR Credit Solutions. This facility provides us with a $20 million term loan and a revolving credit facility of up to $30 million that matures on April 2, 2029.
We're very pleased with the growth of our Commerce Media business in 2024 and our results reflect the ongoing strategic shift that we've been driving for the past several quarters now.
Looking ahead to 2025, our focus is on the continued execution of our strategic pivot to grow our Commerce Media Solutions. To do this, we're entering into partnerships with leading advertising brands and media partners, which we detailed earlier in this call to enhance Fluent's credibility and market recognition, as a leading provider of products and services in the commerce media space.
We're also bringing on leading industry talent to help us further our goals. Subsequent to the close of the quarter and the fiscal year, we announced the addition of Adrian Stack as our new Chief Product Officer. Adrian has extensive experience in product development leadership and the commerce media space, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the Fluent team.
As we execute on this strategy, we believe that we're positioning Fluent to drive revenue growth, margin expansion and enhanced profitability metrics underscored by the growth and success of our Commerce Media Solutions.
With that, we'll be happy to take questions at this time.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Maria Ripps from Canaccord Genuity.

Maria Ripps

Hi. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. First, so you scale your CMS revenue pretty nicely last year. So now that it has reached over $60 million run rate, I guess, what's the right way to think about sort of the pace of growth going forward.
And so when you talk about partnerships, but maybe more broadly, what are the key drivers or building blocks from here? And do you have the necessary infrastructure in place to scale this business further?

Donald Patrick

Maria, thanks for your question. So I'll hit a couple of different things in your questions around the CMS revenue. So as you know we started this business in the first quarter 2023. And we built it off the, I'll say, really strong competitive assets that we have within the owned and operated business. So, from a data perspective, technology perspective, et cetera. We were building off a foundation that we had built over 14 years.
So our pipeline is growing aggressively. You can see the numbers, and we do see visibility that we can continue at a triple-digit rate in 2025, and we actually see that continuing on in 2026. Two primary drivers: as you know, one, commerce media is one of those transformational changes to digital advertising in the last 10 years.
So, there's a lot of greenfield here where partners are coming in and brands are coming in to participate in commerce media; and the second is that we have now been building our brand and building our ability to drive superior results and the competition, based on our competitive advantages. And they're starting to get out in the market to accelerate where we are.
So that's part of why we have really came out in Q3 to start to talk more about the numbers on commerce media because we do see that visibility and we are confident. It does two things to do our business model.
The first one is obviously it's more seasonal based on the verticals that we serve within commerce media and the retail side that obviously is changing our business model and how we look at quarter-to-quarter. But the more important piece is that revenue is more predictable and it's more valuable, right? We're embedding our technology onto our commerce media partners' websites.
We're getting all their transaction that they're getting in the post-transaction environment and it's a very favorable rev share. So compared relative to the legacy and owned and operated business of Fluent is much more predictable. So we have great visibility in terms of how to grow that.
You asked a question around how the building blocks and infrastructure and partners. So I'll hit the infrastructure. We are leveraging off the core of what Fluent has built both from a technology and data perspective but equally important from sort of a cultural perspective.
We come at it as a marketing company. We've been marketing to our own consumers and interacting with them and we have tons of great first-party data to leverage and we're bringing that to bear for our new partners on the commerce media side.
So the infrastructure you've seen it in our financial numbers the last two years in 2023 and 2024 was a heavy investment to on the technology and the analytics side to build out specifically for Commerce Media versus our core owned and operated business.
And we see that as we grow this business it's a much more -- we'll be able to manage those expenses those investments much easier. And as the business grows the revenue comes in. Did I answer all your questions Maria?

Maria Ripps

Yeah, thank you for that. That's very helpful. And then as it relates to your O&O segment I guess is there a portion of the $168 million in revenue that you generated last year that's perhaps a little more durable. And I guess what are your thoughts on maybe stabilizing that segment or some parts of that segment and returning it to growth?

Donald Patrick

Yes. So again as we've talked it's a huge competitive advantage for us but it is not a growth engine and we don't look at it growing again Maria. And we look at it as really just do we -- how do we stabilize that and how do we leverage those assets.
So some of it has to do with the regulatory changes that we talked through at length in the past couple of years about the headwinds there. But equally important it's primarily around where do we allocate our priorities.
And we've continued to invest and move capital and move people towards the commerce media side because of the opportunity there. So that really has been our context around that business. It's a huge competitive advantage. And if we keep it flat or we keep it the decline in a lower percentage we will win big on the commerce media side.

Maria Ripps

Got it. Thank you, Don.

Operator

Patrick Sholl from Barrington Research Associates.

Patrick Sholl

Hi. Kind of following up on the O&O segment or O&O business. Do you include the call centers within that? And I guess just on the call center side if you're stepping away from like the ACA marketplace. So can you maybe just talk about where else you have kind of scale within that business?

Donald Patrick

Sure. Pat thanks for the question. So no we do not include call center in the O&O business. As we've outlined in the last earnings call we now look at our business as the O&O business marketplace Commerce Media Solutions and then agency services where Call Solutions that's under that agency services line.
Just to take a step back Pat I know you've been with us for a while but strategically Call Solutions expands the size of the O&O marketplace because it allows Fluent through live agent capabilities to direct our consumers to higher value higher consideration categories like health and life and home services. So we do continue to grow that business.
And historically it has been a very consistent steady performer for us. And that's really the same value proposition on the O&O marketplaces where we're bringing quality consumers to healthcare providers primarily in Medicare and also in ACA in terms of leads that are going to aggregators that connect to the insurance company.
So we have -- it's been a steady performer. There's been two huge obviously changing sweeping changes that we are working our way through. And that happened in 2024. The first one was the FCC and the CMS came out with new regulations that caused the demand in our market from our clients to shift from taking warm transfers to taking inbound calls.
So we did make that shift successfully in Q2 and we did. We were able to drive significant margin in the business but in Q4, the fact that we're buying media to drive those inbound costs, the media costs cause us to have challenges in Q4 in that business.
It's continued on in Q1 that elevated level of media costs. We have a very good plan around diversifying that. It's going to take us a couple of quarters to work through, but the high-quality consumer and the demand in the high-quality partners that we work with continue to be in place for us to drive that business forward.

Patrick Sholl

Okay. And then on Commerce Media Solutions, I think you had mentioned that you're able to leverage the data on the O&O side to support that. I'm just kind of curious with the continued softness in O&O. Is that kind of limits the ability to have that data bolster the Commerce Media side? And any sort of like an inflection where like you have enough scale in Commerce Media where weakness in the O&O side wouldn't necessarily be kind of risk continuing to grow that business?

Donald Patrick

Yeah, so you're absolutely right. Obviously, the -- as we've really focused and repositioned O&O around the quality side rather than on the growth side, the data that comes in on a daily basis is less than it was in the past. But we have 14 years of first-party data and consumers coming to over 200 million unique e-mail addresses and that database, obviously, is incredibly deep and incredibly large breadth in terms of campaigns and things like that. So even with the smaller traffic and consumers coming on our O&O that data continues to be very relevant and fresh for us for the Commerce Media.
And I think your second question, there's two big business model things that we're seeing. One is, in the second half of this year we get significant seasonality in that Commerce Media Solutions. So we see the second half where we will return to growth, double-digit growth that will drive double-digit growth across the consolidated side of Fluent.
And I think that is the inflection point that we see based on where we are in the growth and the wins that we're getting in that commerce media platform.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
William Dezellem with Tieton Capital Management.

Willam Dezellem

Thank you. Would you please expand further on a comment in your opening remarks relative to the pipeline in the Commerce Media business, both in terms of the size of that pipeline in terms of number of prospects but also, the size of those prospects relative to the customers that you currently have on board?

Donald Patrick

Thanks Bill. Thanks for the question. So I was just talking a little bit into Maria, our pipeline continues to grow very, very successfully based on the fact that we are, obviously, building our brand around driving better results and also, by the fact that the industry -- we're sitting in the middle of a fantastic transformative industry with a lot of headwinds -- with a lot of tailwinds. So the pipeline continues to grow at a great pace for us to provide that visibility of triple-digit growth rate for that business in 2025.
And as we continue to land these brands, these new wins, -- in the verticals, we're able to obviously from a marketing perspective, penetrate that vertical with great case studies and great marketing materials to accelerate the sales side. So it is fantastic momentum and the pipeline is significant in size for us to deliver on our commitment that we've made in terms of growth.
Regarding size, there's obviously from a -- there's different size brands that we work with. There's large ones that will -- that can have hundreds -- have millions of consumers or some that have smaller ones that come in.
We manage those -- the pipeline based on the breadth of that and how do we segment that. But there are some very large transformative partners that we're discussing and we're in the midst of a pipeline that could accelerate that growth rate that we've positioned.
We don't factor that into our business Bill. We don't factor that into our forecast. But as we build our brand and we build our results that we've been able to drive for our partners, we're very pleased with some strategic partnerships that we could -- that would be transformational for us and grow and accelerate that business revenue that we've laid out for you. But we do not plan our business around that and we do not run our business by those big deals.

Willam Dezellem

Don would you please quantify kind of what transformative would be any way that you can scale that for us and what's the timeline? Generally speaking larger is -- leads to a longer sales cycle. And so is this something that might happen next year or nearer term?

Donald Patrick

Yes, Okay. Great question Bill. I hope so. If you look at an average it depends a lot on the verticals we're in, but I'll just take retail verticals as a -- because that's our largest vertical. An average size partner that we work with might have $10 million post-transaction sessions a year, right? But that could mean we have very valuable partners that are doing $1 million. We have very valued partners that are doing $30 million or $50 million, right? So, that's the range in which you kind of see in the mix of our portfolio and the mix of our current clients also.
The transformative deals that we're talking about will be a multiple of the high end of that range. So, if we're talking about things that could literally significantly change the growth trajectory that we have.
Regarding timing, they do take a little bit longer at times, but I'm going to tell you guys will be the first to hear when we closed on of these deals. So, we -- there's things in the pipeline that we think that can happen obviously in 2025.

Willam Dezellem

Great. Thank you. And would you please talk about what your conversion is. So, once you've won a customer and their customer has purchased a product and you're presenting the post-sale ad. What's your conversion rate versus the competition the rest of the industry?

Donald Patrick

Yeah. We don't -- well we do have some case studies Bill that we've -- that we made public around the conversions and revenue in our Investor deck. Obviously, some of this is competitive that we don't want to disclose. But we -- there's two important pieces of this, right? One is the size of how the quality of the consumer that we're connecting to our brands are world-class brands like a Disney or an Apple et cetera.
And we've seen compared to head-to-head competition that are -- that the consumers is up over 25% more valuable than the ones that the consumers were -- or the brands were connecting the consumers to with our competitors. So, that's a significant value proposition for us is higher quality consumers based on our technology and our data and our ability to identify and serve the right ad.
On the partner side, we also have a very similar increase in an uptick in the revenue that we provide our e-commerce partners up in the over 20%. So, a significant uplift in the competitive advantage that we have head-to-head against our competition.

Willam Dezellem

And so when you think about these large prospects or frankly the rest of the pipeline that's maybe not necessarily transformative, but all part of the pipeline. Is there anything about that pipeline that would -- is different so that you would not be able to generate for them at 25% more value?
I guess where my mind is going is it seems like your probability of winning, if they're basing their decision on the financial aspect of the transaction. It really increases your chance of winning those deals.

Donald Patrick

Right. Yeah. So the answer is we believe that, we are heavily as we've talked about and we're not in all the verticals, Bill. And obviously even within the verticals, maybe you take retail example, there are different audience segments and different things that we've got to work through in terms of getting that same sort of return.
But again that, sort of fits to where our value proposition and how we go to market. We're a marketing company that we've been doing it for owned and operated properties for 14 years. And we know how to drive consumer engagement. And we know how to drive results.
So we're confident that that DNA and that expertise in owned and operated will translate into the different verticals that we enter into. So there are -- we've laid out in the presentation we are not in some of the verticals that we believe we are going to get into and grow.
It's going to take a little bit of time to work through that, if we get into for example travel. We're not into travel right now, but we're confident that marketing DNA and our first-party data will drive those results across every vertical and across different types of partners within those verticals.

Willam Dezellem

Yeah. That is helpful. And thank you for all the color. One additional question, your gross profit dollars approximately half came from the Commerce Media business. And you all have been very clear about seasonality within your business.
The question is, as you look over the course of the next four quarters, do you see the gross profit dollars coming from Commerce Media, holding and or growing particularly in Q1 and Q2 or due to the seasonality that those would be under pressure as a percentage of the total gross profit.

Donald Patrick

Bill, there's -- I think I understand your question. I'll answer it two different ways: first the business mix, right is going to -- we're very transparent on the business mix that's been happening around that Commerce Media.
So we see that business mix continuing to increase as a percentage of the total value of the, Fluent business. So that business mix will continue to drive the margin itself, at Commerce Media business is relatively consistent and predictable, based on the revenue share that we have. So we'll see margin -- the margin percent be consistent but we'll see the mix of that business continue to drive and be more significant part of Fluent, overall.

Willam Dezellem

And in Q1, specifically, do you anticipate Commerce Media, percentage of the business to increase or decrease? And I'm really trying to get my head wrapped around the seasonality from that perspective.

Donald Patrick

Yeah. Yeah. So it will increase as a percentage of the overall Fluent business, in Q1. We do go down sequentially from Q4 to Q1. The Commerce Media business will continue to grow at the rates that we've talked about. It's just the seasonality from Q4 to Q1 the revenue will decline based on that seasonality.

Willam Dezellem

Great thank you and good luck closing some of these large prospects.

Donald Patrick

Thank you, Bill.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Don Patrick, for any closing remarks.

Donald Patrick

Thank you for joining our call today. The key headline is reinforcing, why we're so confident about our strategic commitment to win in the rapidly growing Commerce Media industry, and it leaves us poised for growth through execution to deliver breakout performance in the second half of this year.
Thank you for your continued support. And we look forward to giving you an update, after Q1.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.