Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) vs. Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS) Head-To-Head Contrast

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

Profitability

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

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Fluent and Integral Ad Science, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

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

Fluent presently has a consensus target price of $2.50, suggesting a potential upside of 30.21%. Integral Ad Science has a consensus target price of $11.52, suggesting a potential upside of 12.19%. Given Fluent’s higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Fluent is more favorable than Integral Ad Science.

Risk and Volatility

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

23.3% of Fluent shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.8% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by institutional investors. 43.5% of Fluent shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings and Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Fluent	$229.84 million	0.24	-$29.28 million	($1.15)	-1.67
Integral Ad Science	$530.10 million	3.25	$37.79 million	$0.28	36.68

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.

Summary

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

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.

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.