THUMZUP MEDIA Corp

Overview

General

As used herein, “we,” “us,” “our,” the “Company,” “Thumzup™,” means Thumzup™ Media Corporation unless otherwise indicated. Thumzup™ operates in a single business segment which is social media marketing. Thumzup™ has a mobile iPhone and Android applications called “Thumzup™” that connects brands and people who use and love these brands. For the advertiser, Thumzup™ incentivizes real people to become content creators and post authentic valuable posts on social media about the advertiser and its products.

OVERVIEW

Thumzup Media Corporation (“Thumzup” or “Company”) was incorporated on October 27, 2020, under the laws of the State of Nevada, and its headquarters is located in Los Angeles. The Company’s primary business is software as a service provider dedicated to connecting businesses with consumers and allowing the business to incentivize consumers to post about their experience on social media. Thumzup mission is to democratize social media marketing by connecting advertisers with non-professional people, who can be paid for their posts about products and services they love through its technology which utilizes a proprietary mobile app (“App”). The App generates scalable word-of-mouth product posts and recommendations for advertisers on social media and is designed to connect advertisers with individuals who are willing to promote their products online.

The Thumzup App enables users to select a brand they want to post about on social media. Once the Thumzup user selects the brand and takes a photo (using the App), the App will post the photo and a caption to the user’s social media account(s). As of the date of this filing, Instagram is the Company’s initial social media platform that is being used, due to its wide acceptance and its great functionality using photographs. The Company expects to add other social media platforms in the future. For the advertiser, the Thumzup system enables brands to get real people to promote products to their friends, rather than displaying banner ads that consumers now mostly ignore, or contracting with expensive professional influencers. The Company has recorded nominal revenues during the year ended December 31, 2023 and continues with the development of enhancements to its App and marketing efforts.

The Company is an “emerging growth company” as that term is used in the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act of 2012, and as such, has elected to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements.

Thumzup® Products and Services

The Company specializes in the domain of social media marketing. Thumzup’s flagship product, the Thumzup® App, available on both iPhone and Android operating systems, serves as a symbiotic bridge between brands and their enthusiasts. For advertisers, Thumzup® incentivizes real people, referred to as content creators (“Creators”), to generate and post authentic, valuable posts on social media about the advertiser and its products.

The Company seeks to capitalize on industry-wide gig economy and business democratization trends. Immense value and opportunity have been created through the democratization of various sectors including ride sharing, hospitality, finance and other industries. The Thumzup® suite of tools are designed to facilitate and expedite this democratization trend for consumers and advertisers within the online advertising space.

Leveraging advanced technology, the Company has built a community around its Thumzup® App that resonates with the ethos of the influencer and gig economy. This technology and community are designed to generate scalable authentic product posts, endorsements, and recommendations for advertisers on social media. It is designed to connect advertisers with individuals who are willing to tell their friends and family about the advertisers’ products both on and offline.

Social Media Marketing Software Technology

The Thumzup® mobile App enables Creators, to select from brands advertising on the App and get paid to post about the advertiser on social media. By selecting the brand and capturing an image using the Thumzup® App, Thumzup® Creators can automatically share the content, complete with captions, to their social channels. The advertiser then reviews and approves the post for payment and the Creator can cash out whenever they choose through popular digital payment systems. For the advertiser, the Thumzup® system enables brands to receive genuine user-generated promotions, moving beyond the often-ignored traditional banner ads.

A recent Nielsen report found more than 83% of consumers believe friends and family are the most reliable sources of information about products. According to a Pixlee article, 64% of millennials recommend a product at least once a month, and according to a 2019 Morning Consult survey, 86% of Gen Z and millennials would post content for monetary compensation.

In the past decade, social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok have achieved mass worldwide consumer acceptance and created hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value. This worldwide viral growth demonstrates the potential of innovative social media platforms like Thumzup®, furnished with the right blend of user experience and value, to captivate Creators and command significant time investments.

The Company is an early-stage entity building a new real-time platform to support the gig economy. The guiding philosophy is simple: empower individuals to monetize their authentic social media engagements. The Thumzup® App is envisioned as a nexus where advertisers can foster direct consumer connections. However, the platform’s success hinges on securing a critical mass of advertisers to ensure its viability and scalability, and to perpetuate Creator engagement. It’s pertinent to note that while the Company is dedicated to this mission, there’s no definitive guarantee of achieving the envisioned outcomes. No assurance can be given that the Company will be able to achieve these results.

The Industry—Online Advertising

Growing at a 16.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the online advertising market is set to grow from $208 billion in 2022 to $354.9 billion in 2026, according to a 2021 Reportlinker.com study. The Company believes that it is developing a new form of social media marketing that does not currently exist, therefore present descriptions of market size and penetration are indirectly applicable. As Thumzup® matures, the Company anticipates other competitors will emerge in this new market, capitalizing on the payment model to non-professional advocates to tell their friends about products they love on social media at the point-of-sale. Currently, “influencer marketing” stands as the most analogous segment to Thumzup®’s niche, witnessing substantial growth with the rise of social media influencers. As social media influencers become more plentiful and proven, advertising spending has increased in this space. We believe major brands recognize that having their happy customers authentically post on social media is valuable.

Most existing paid influencer marketing platforms were designed for professional and semi-professional online personas. Some of these platforms have expanded to accommodate “micro-influencers,” those boasting 5,000 to 30,000 social media followers. In the Company’s opinion, none of these influencer platforms has entered the public consciousness and found mass adoption.

Recent findings from TapInfluence highlighted that influencer marketing content delivers 11 times higher return on investment than traditional forms of digital marketing, and approximately 66% of marketing firms now deploy influencer marketing according to a 2018 Association of National Advertisers survey. A recent Nielsen report found more than 80% of consumers believe friends and family are the most reliable sources of information about products. Thumzup®’s own data indicates that as an influencer’s total follower count rises, the rate of engagement (likes and comments) with followers decreases. The data showed that those with less than 1,000 followers, also referred to as “nano-influencers,” generally received likes on their posts 8% of the time. There appears to be, in the Company’s view, a clear downward correlation between follower sizes and post likes. Around 66% of marketers now use influencers and nearly half of U.S. marketers plan to increase their influencer budgets according to a 2018 Association of National Advertisers survey. According to a 2019 Morning Consult survey, 86% of Gen Z and millennials would post content for monetary compensation.

The Company has designed Thumzup® “from the ground up” to make it easy for brands and service providers to activate those who may not be professional influencers but are genuinely enthusiastic about the products and services. With a design philosophy echoing Apple’s quintessential simplicity, both the Thumzup® App and its advertiser dashboard seamlessly integrate into existing social media usage patterns, ensuring nearly effortless use.

The Company’s first product—Thumzup® App

The Company specializes in the domain of social media marketing, primarily through its mobile iPhone and Android application called “Thumzup®.” The application connects brands, products, and services to the people who use and love these brands, products, and services. For advertisers, Thumzup® catalyzes authentic user-generated content, from real product reviews and testimonials, by amplifying brand visibility and facilitating a direct, efficient connection with target consumers, ultimately boosting promotions and traffic to their offerings.

The Company is building an influencer and gig economy community around the Thumzup® App. This initiative aims to foster authentic product posts and recommendations on social media. The App and advertiser dashboard are designed to connect advertisers with individuals who are willing to promote their products and services online and offline. At its core, the Thumzup® App aims to simplify and elevate person-to-person advertising, ensuring it’s not only effective, but highly scalable and economic for Thumzup® advertisers.

Intellectual Property

The Company owns the copyrights to the source code for the Thumzup® App on the iPhone iOS and Android operating mobile operating systems as used on the majority of mobile phone and tablet devices. Additionally, the Company owns the copyrighted and proprietary source code for the Thumzup® App’s backend system, responsible for administrating the Thumzup® App, tracking payments and monitoring advertising campaigns.

The distinct Thumzup® thumb logo is a registered trademark owned by ThumzupTM Media Corporation with Reg. No. 6,842,424, registered Sep. 13, 2022. On April 13, 2021, the Company filed a trademark application ser. No. 90642789 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) for the word mark THUMZUP, which was granted registration on June 21, 2022, resulting in reg. no. 6764158. Also on April 13, 2021, the Company filed a trademark application ser. No. 90642848 for the Thumzup® logo, featuring a stylized hand with an upwardly extended thumb. Meta Platforms, Inc. (which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram) initially filed opposition to the logo on June 30, 2022. Thumzup® agreed to not use the logo as a reaction to a post and Meta Platforms, Inc. subsequently withdrew their opposition on August 5, 2022, and it was dismissed without prejudice.

Business Model

Advertisers purchase a campaign on the Thumzup® website. Once the advertiser approves a post for payment, the platform facilitates the payment to the Creator, with monetary amounts that range from $1.00 to $1,000.00 per approved post. The Thumzup® platform enables the advertiser to screen and filter posts so that the advertiser only pays for posts that are commercially valuable, ensuring Creators are rewarded for posts that have images and text that represent the advertiser in a positive manner.

Per Post Fee Structure: Thumzup® advertisers are charged a ‘Per Post Fee’ model. By way of illustration, if an advertiser purchases 100,000 posts at a rate of $10 per post to Thumzup® Creators, the total cost would be $13.00 per post or $1,300,000. From this, Creators in this illustration would receive a total of $1,000,000 and Thumzup® would retain $300,000 as its service fee. The Thumzup® platform would then facilitate 100,000 endorsed posts for the advertiser from Thumzup® Creators sharing with their followers about their endorsed products on social media.

Value Proposition

The Thumzup® App is designed to generate scalable, genuine social media content for advertisers, bridging the gap between advertisers and individuals who are willing to authentically promote their products online. The Company envisions that many gig economy workers will be ideal candidates to become Creators posting on Thumzup®. Envision a gig economy driver endorsing a diner they’ve just visited or a gig economy freelance designer at a cafe doing a graphic design project from a gig economy site who takes a moment to post about the coffee shop – all via Thumzup®. The Company believes that Thumzup® not only can readily provide supplemental income for this existing pool of gig economy workers, but also ensures advertisers receive quality content worthy of their ad spend.

Regulatory Compliance

The Federal Trade Commission regulates and requires certain disclosures by social media influencers, specifying when disclosure is required, and how the disclosure should be presented. These rules are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, 16 CFR Part 255. Specifically, the FTC requires that influencers disclose any financial, employment, personal, or family relationship with a brand. Influencers must disclose financial relationships and consideration paid including any money, discounted products or other benefits paid to the influencer. Creators on the Thumzup® platform are being paid to post about Thumzup® advertisers. Thumzup® puts #ad in each post made on its platform to disclose that the creator has been paid to make the post.

The Company does not believe its compliance with existing FTC regulations will have a material effect on capital expenditures, earnings and competitive position of the Company for the current fiscal year and any other material future period.

Competition

The Company has competitors in influencer marketing software companies as GRIN, #paid, CreatorIQ, Mavrck, Popular Pays, Tribe Dynamics, Aspire, Influenster, Traackr, and Skeepers. All of the above-named competitor influencer marketing software is focused on influencers who see themselves as professional influencers. To the best of the Company’s knowledge, these competitors are not building platforms designed to turn social media creators into micro-influencers in the manner that the Company seeks to accomplish. Rep is also an app that connects brands with influencers who are interesting in promoting brands. Rep’s app is different from Thumzup® because it is targeting people who consider themselves influencers.

The Company does not currently know of another business that is seeking to build a community of everyday people and empowering them to post about brands that they love.

Nevertheless, the influencer marketing industry segments are rapidly evolving and competitive and the Company expects competition to intensify in the future with the emergence of new technologies and market entrants. The Company’s competitors may enjoy competitive advantages, such as greater name recognition, longer operating histories, substantially greater market share, established marketing relationships with, and access to, large existing advertisers and user bases, and substantially greater financial, technical and other resources. These competitors may use these advantages to offer apps or other products similar to the Company’s at a lower price, develop different products to compete with the Company’s current solutions and respond more quickly and effectively than the Company does to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards or client requirements particularly across different cities and geographical regions. Certain competitors could also use strong or dominant positions in one or more markets to gain competitive advantage against the Company in markets in which it operates in the future. The Company believes its ability to compete successfully for users, content, and advertising and other customers depends upon many factors both within and beyond the Company’s control, including:

Problems in the market that Thumzup® solves

According to Inc. Magazine, in 2019, JetBlue Airways did a promotion where it offered free travel to people in exchange for posting about JetBlue on social media. The promotion was deemed not to be a success because many of the people reportedly deleted the posts after claiming the reward. JetBlue had no platform for tracking the influencers and holding them accountable. The Thumzup® Platform allows Advertisers to limit and or cap their advertising spend, as well as allowing the Advertiser to approve individual posts prior to the Creator being paid.

Employees

As of February 21, 2024, The Company has four (4) full-time employees, as well as sixteen (16) marketing, sales, and finance independent contractors. The Company also utilizes the services of approximately seven (7) part-time software developers. All of these software developers are third-party contractors and are located outside the United States.

From time to time, the Company may become involved in litigation or other legal proceedings. The Company is not currently a party to any litigation or legal proceedings. Regardless of outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on the Company because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Available Information:

Thumzup™ is located at 11845 W. Olympic Blvd, Ste 1100W #13, Los Angeles, CA 90064. Our telephone number is (800) 403-6150 and our Internet website address is www.ThumzupMedia.com.

We file or furnish electronically with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10- Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act. We make copies of these reports available free of charge through our investor relations website as soon as reasonably practicable after we file or furnish them with the SEC. These reports are also accessible through the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Information contained on or accessible through our website www.thumzupmedia.com is not incorporated into, and does not form a part of, this Annual Report or any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.