Guest · Retail and commerce media
Matt Conlin
Founder & Chief Customer Officer, Fluent
A 20-plus year career in digital and performance marketing, from a first job in 2005 to founding a public commerce media company built on outcomes.
About
Matt Conlin is Founder and Chief Customer Officer of Fluent, a publicly traded commerce media solution provider he co-founded in 2010. He is known for a 20-plus year career in digital and performance marketing and for arguing that commerce media is the third great wave of digital advertising after search and social.
Conlin grew up inside advertising. His father ran a marketing and design firm, RJ Conlin Inc, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, producing catalogue work for General Motors, and Conlin spent childhood photo shoots shining up Chevrolet cars. He began university in New York City two weeks before 9/11, graduated in 2005 into the early days of digital and performance marketing, and took his first job at an early performance marketing company. Within a couple of years he was leading a New York team for a UK-based digital marketing firm launching its US office, which he and his co-founder grew from zero to $30 million in three years, by his account.
Armed with that blueprint, Conlin co-founded Fluent in 2010 on a product-first thesis, and says the company reached $40 million of revenue in its first year. Fluent was acquired in 2015, and Conlin and his partner regained control of the business in 2018, since when it has run as a standalone public company. Over the last couple of years, by his account, Fluent took $100 million of top line revenue off the board to rebuild its technology stack and reinvest in commerce media, the wave Conlin now describes as the future of the business.
Career19 years
- 2010 to now Fluent Chief Customer Officer & Founder
- 2007 to 2010 Clash Media Director of Sales USA
How Matt thinks3 convictions
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Outcomes before it was fashionable
Conlin argues that Fluent's durable advantage is a founding focus on outcomes rather than impressions, long before the industry made it a buzzword. He points to early clients who bought media without tracking whether it drove sales, and to a market that has since caught up. For him, holding every dollar to a true return on ad spend is not a fad, it is the core discipline.
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Retail media is a philosophical departure
Conlin sees the hardest step for a retailer entering commerce media as cultural, not technical. A business built to sell products off its shelves has to convince its leadership to become an advertising business, which he frames as a departure from the core. Only once that buy-in is won can a retailer make the investments and walk the phased path from on-site inventory to off-site targeting to non-endemic offers.
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Constant reinvention
Conlin treats reinvention as survival, holding that a company not growing and innovating gets lapped by its competition. He points to at least five major pivots across Fluent's life and to a decision to sacrifice $100 million of top line revenue to rebuild for commerce media. His guiding belief is that what one does in the face of adversity determines their destiny.
