IZEA Worldwide Inc

PART I

ITEM 1 – BUSINESS

Our Mission

Our mission is to Champion the Creators, enabling individuals from various backgrounds—from college students and stay-at-home parents to celebrities and professional journalists—to monetize their digital content, creativity, and influence. We compensate creators for their unique contributions, such as producing and distributing various forms of content (e.g., text, videos, photos, status updates, illustrations) on behalf of marketers across different websites, blogs, and social media channels.

Corporate Information

IZEA Worldwide, Inc. (together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries, “we,” “us,” “our,” “IZEA,” or the “Company”) is a Nevada corporation that was founded in February 2006 under the name PayPerPost, Inc. and became a public company in May 2011. In January 2015, IZEA purchased all of the outstanding shares of capital stock of Ebyline, Inc. (“Ebyline”). In March 2016, we formed IZEA Canada, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary incorporated in Ontario, Canada, to provide sales and support for IZEA’s Canadian customers. In July 2016, we purchased all the outstanding shares of capital stock of ZenContent, Inc. (“ZenContent”) and, in July 2018, a subsidiary of the Company merged with TapInfluence, Inc. (“TapInfluence”). ZenContent, Ebyline, and TapInfluence were merged into IZEA in December 2017, December 2019, and December 2020, respectively. In December 2023, IZEA purchased all the outstanding shares of capital stock in Hoozu Holdings LTD (“Hoozu”) and acquired certain assets and liabilities of Zuberance, Inc., a pioneering advocate marketing solution platform.

Our Company is based in Orlando, Florida, but operates as a virtual-first company, with all of our employees working remotely since March 16, 2020.

Industry Background and Trends

When IZEA first launched PayPerPost in 2006, the concept of a brand paying bloggers to create sponsored content on their blogs was new and highly controversial among marketers and content creators. The Company introduced the idea when there were no ads on Facebook, YouTube, or X (formerly Twitter), and social media was largely void of corporate marketing messages. Since then, the landscape has changed dramatically. Today, strategic engagement of online influencers is table stakes for modern brands - largely due to changes in consumer behavior and the large-scale adoption of social media platforms. Similarly, those same companies are now producing custom marketing content for their social channels and embracing influencer marketing to reach their customers.

While industry research indicates that brand spending on influencer and content marketing has grown dramatically in the last several years, the business processes and practices have yet to evolve in a meaningful way for most buyers and sellers. The markets that we operate in are highly fragmented, highly competitive, and primarily limited by the current inefficiencies inherent in our space. Most marketers have been forced to utilize a variety of execution partners and manual processes to navigate the complicated landscape, often resulting in low returns on their time investment or, worse yet, questionable results. We believe this is mainly due to marketers and creators lacking an efficient way to identify and engage each other at scale due to the ever-changing industry landscape.

At the same time, influencers and content creators seeking to monetize their communities and work product face significant challenges in making marketers aware of their services and finding quality brands motivated to sponsor them. In addition, those creators with smaller followings need more individual influence and audience to warrant the processing of a micro-transaction. In many cases, it costs a marketer more money to issue a traditional check to a nano influencer than the value of the sponsorship payment itself. Further complicating the sponsorship process for both parties are federal regulations around social media endorsements, tax reporting generally applicable to anyone receiving income for services, and the associated campaign tracking required to provide compliance. While many marketers would prefer to be “part of the conversation,” we believe the complexity and cost of individual sponsorship often deter them from doing so.

We believe that addressing the current efficiency and measurable success challenges via technology represents a significant opportunity. IZEA ultimately addresses these challenges with targeted, scalable software solutions that aggregate content creators, while providing marketers with a variety of tools and data to help them make informed decisions. In doing so, we offer multiple efficient, innovative ways for creators and marketers of all sizes to find each other and form a compensated relationship.

By continually developing our creator network directly and through talent partners, we make our company more attractive to our customers who seek a wide variety of creators to fulfill their content and advertising needs. As marketers utilize our software and services to a greater extent, we expect to increase the monetization opportunities for creators, which should, in turn, attract even more creators and further enhance value for our marketers.

Our Business

IZEA is a pioneering marketing technology company that offers cutting-edge software and professional services, empowering brands to engage and transact with a diverse range of social influencers and content creators. As staunch advocates of the burgeoning creator economy, we facilitate individuals’ capitalizing on their creativity, content, and influence. We pride ourselves on having innovated the concept of an influencer marketplace in 2006 with the introduction of our inaugural platform, PayPerPost. Since then, we have been dedicated to enhancing our product and service offerings. Our clientele spans from independent content creators to Fortune 10 brands, all integral parts of an ecosystem powered by mutually advantageous collaborations. These collaborations manifest in three key ways:

Influencer Marketing: We partner with marketers to facilitate influencer marketing campaigns. This involves a brand compensating an individual with a substantial social following to create sponsored content and disseminate it among their followers.

Custom Generated Content (“CGC”): Unlike influencer marketing that targets individuals with large followings irrespective of brand loyalty, CGC emphasizes content creation by brand advocates (“Advocates”). Advocates represent a brand’s most loyal customers. We assist brands in generating more CGC through dedicated programs aimed at boosting online visibility and driving sales.

Custom Content: We collaborate with marketers to supplement or replace their content development initiatives on their website, social media, and other channels. Our network of creators produce editorial and marketing content for both online and offline publication. Additionally, we enable our customers to utilize generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) to produce content programmatically.

We offer two primary modes of engagement for our customers. Firstly, they can opt for our ‘Managed Services’, where our team of professionals oversees their initiatives. This hands-on approach allows our clients to fully leverage our expertise, from strategizing and planning to executing collaborations. Secondly, for those who prefer a more independent approach, we offer ‘Software as a Service’ (“SaaS”) tools. With this option, customers can manage their own programs using our intuitive, self-service software tools.

While the lion’s share of our current revenue is derived from Managed Services customers, the majority of our clientele comprises those who license our software. While our software clientele includes Fortune 500 customers amongst the smaller businesses who lean toward our SaaS offerings, larger corporations and agencies tend to favor our Managed Services. This preference could be attributed to the level of human resources, control, flexibility, and scalability each option offers.

Regardless of the mode of engagement, our software platforms remain the cornerstone of all our operations. We rely on them to drive our services and deliver value to our customers. Our primary software platforms today include IZEA Flex and IZEA.com. Each of these platforms is uniquely designed to facilitate specific aspects of collaborations between creators and brands.

Our Platforms

Flex. In response to evolving user needs and industry dynamics, we developed IZEA Flex (“Flex”) as our new flagship platform for enterprise influencer marketing. Flex was initially announced in September 2022, with its full commercial launch in January 2023. Flex replaced The IZEA Exchange (“IZEAx”), our primary technology platform until mid-2023.

While Flex borrows from some of the concepts and underlying technology pioneered by the development of IZEAx, it approaches the problems faced by influencer marketing professionals differently. While IZEAx was heavily focused on predefined processes and workflows, Flex is designed to be much more open and “flexible.” This approach allows marketers to work with influencers and their representation on any platform in whatever way they see fit - while retaining data, tracking, and operational organization.

The result is a comprehensive suite of tools that, individually, supercharge influencer marketing efforts and become even more powerful when combined. Flex comprises seven core modules:

• Discover, which allows marketers to search through content from millions of influencer social profiles while filtering across channels, demographics, and interests;

•ContentMine, a content management tool that collects and measures influencer content, providing real-time insights and A.I. content analysis from BrandGraph;

•ShareMonitor, a multi-platform social monitoring tool that allows marketers to monitor hashtags, keywords, and brand mentions across leading social platforms;

•Integrations, which provides deep integrations such as with Google Analytics, Gmail, and Shopify, unlocking additional data sources and insights for marketers.

•Tracking Links, which provides real-time tracking metrics for influencer marketing and can track customer conversions, spend, and purchases when used with other Flex modules;

•Contacts, which provides the ability to create custom contact lists that span the creator ecosystem, including influencers, agents, and legal representation; smart lists that use demographic information to group creator contacts automatically; and

•Transactions, which makes sending electronic creator payments faster and at a lower cost, providing searchable transaction data.

In addition to supporting open operating modalities, Flex also enables the measurement of influencer marketing campaigns at scale. Marketers can see the revenue generated from each piece of content published by an influencer and are able to better understand the ROI for each campaign they execute on the platform.

Throughout 2023, we have introduced several key features to the platform to enhance its capabilities in influencer marketing. The first significant addition is the Dynamic Content Requests feature, which allows marketers to customize and streamline their content requirements from influencers, making the campaign management process more efficient.

Another major update is the expansion of AI tools within the platform, including AI Briefs and AI Brainstorm. These tools leverage AI to assist in creating detailed campaign briefs and generating creative campaign ideas, respectively. AI Briefs simplify the process of briefing influencers by automatically generating detailed project outlines based on a few input parameters, while AI Brainstorm helps marketers come up with innovative concepts for their campaigns, enhancing creativity and effectiveness.

The introduction of Flex Offers simplified the negotiation and agreement process between brands and influencers. This feature streamlines offer management by providing a centralized platform where terms can be negotiated, offers can be made, and agreements can be finalized, all within a secure and transparent environment. This facilitates smoother collaboration and faster agreement closures.

Lastly, Comprehensive Expense Management has been added to offer users a more robust tool for tracking and managing off-platform expenses related to influencer marketing campaigns. This feature allows for integrating expense tracking into the campaign management process, enabling marketers to maintain a clear overview of their budget and spending. It supports allocating funds, tracking payments, and analyzing campaign costs, providing a comprehensive financial management tool within the IZEA Flex platform.

IZEA Flex is assertively and aggressively priced, standing out against other market offerings. Our strategic vision is to provide an ideal equilibrium between cost and value, ensuring our customers enjoy top-tier services at a reasonable price. We acknowledge that the high cost of many solutions in our sector can be a significant obstacle for numerous prospective customers, particularly those seeking long-term market opportunities. We firmly believe this steep price barrier curtails the broader market’s potential and impedes the industry’s expansion.

IZEA.com. In October 2022, we launched The Creator Marketplace (“Marketplace”) on IZEA.com, replacing and enhancing the functionality of Shake, a legacy marketplace product. IZEA.com provides creators with powerful tools to present their work to marketers (“Listings”). It allows marketers to search a database of influencers eager to work with brands and make purchases directly through the platform. In addition to searching creator Listings, marketers can create their own “Casting Calls”, allowing them to openly solicit Creators to participate in their campaigns. This offering makes it easier for Marketers to identify and establish communications with influencers. Rather than searching for influencers and doing outreach, influencers now come to brands.

In addition to the Marketplace functionality added to IZEA.com in 2022, we have implemented a suite of generative AI tools designed to help creators and marketers create content.

FormAI, unveiled by IZEA in June 2023, represents a significant advancement in integrating AI in the influencer marketing ecosystem. It is a comprehensive suite of AI tools designed specifically for those in the creator economy. FormAI helps users enhance their creative process and aids in text and visual content development.

With FormAI, IZEA aims to make it easier for both marketers and influencers to produce more interesting content faster and at a lower cost. We are doing so by combining various AI technologies into a seamless experience with a higher level of content control, predictability, and ease of use. FormAI leverages the best aspects of solutions like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E 3, and brings discrete technologies together in a way that hasn’t been done before.

Key features include generative AI image creation and manipulation tools such as background removal, background replacement, and image transformation. One of the standout features of FormAI is the FormAI Mixers, which allow AI to be trained on faces, objects, and styles to create generative images. These Mixers can be shared among creators, brands, and talent management, fostering a collaborative ecosystem for content creation. Mixers underscore IZEA’s commitment to innovating influencer marketing by enabling unique collaborative content creation opportunities.

On December 1, 2023, IZEA acquired certain assets and liabilities of Zuberance, an advocate marketing solutions provider. Branded as Zuberance by IZEA, marketers build white-label communities of their customers and influencers through licensed access to Zuberance tools. They engage these communities to serve as advocates for their brand, leading to low-cost content creation. Zuberance enables businesses to boost brand affinity, generate influential social content, drive reviews, and gather customer feedback. Through a third-party solution, Zuberance offers a rewards system to incentivize advocate actions and integrates seamlessly with leading e-commerce platforms. Zuberance’s advocate marketing tools may be custom-branded and structured to align seamlessly with a marketer’s unique business model, customer journey, and technological infrastructure. The company also offers full-service solutions, designing, developing, and managing advocate marketing programs and campaigns from end to end.

We sell influencer marketing and custom content campaigns through our client development team and platforms. We target regional, national, and global brands and advertising agencies in two primary ways:

Client Development Team. Our client development teams (sales) are assigned a geographic region or specific markets. We have sales representation in the U.S., Canada, China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. In December of 2023, we added representation in Australia by acquiring Hoozu. Client Development team members are responsible for proactively identifying and managing sales opportunities to brands and agencies.

Demand Generation. We utilize a variety of marketing strategies and platforms to create demand for our Managed Services and SaaS offerings. Our demand generation activities result in a large funnel of potential customers, and we view both marketers and creators as our customers. Our demand generation goal is to funnel our customers into the right offering to accomplish their objectives, be that Managed Services, SaaS, or a combination thereof.

Our overarching strategy is to offer creator economy solutions at every stage of the customer journey, no matter the size of the customer today. Our software offerings start as low as $9 per month, while certain Managed Services customers may spend millions of dollars with us annually. Our SaaS solutions are designed to be low-cost and low-touch, requiring few IZEA personnel to manage customer relationships. Conversely, our Managed Services offering is a white glove premium offering, with a team of professionals catering to each individual customer’s needs.

IZEA’s leadership team has an extensive background in marketing and has been responsible for implementing marketing programs for some of the world’s biggest companies. We focus our corporate marketing efforts on increasing brand awareness, communicating our platform advantages, generating qualified leads for our sales team, growing our creator network, and driving self-service sign-ups to our platforms. Our corporate marketing plan is designed to continually elevate brand awareness and generate demand for our software and services. We rely on a growing number of channels in this area, including third-party social media platforms (e.g., Meta and YouTube), paid search engine marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, and events.

Customers and Revenue

Historically, we have generated revenue from four primary sources: (1) revenue from our managed services when a marketer (typically a brand, agency, or partner) pays us to provide custom content, influencer marketing, amplification, or other campaign management services (“Managed Services”); (2) revenue from fees charged to software customers on their marketplace spend within our platforms (“Marketplace Spend Fees”); (3) revenue from license and subscription fees charged to access our software platforms (“License Fees”); and (4) revenue derived from other fees such as inactivity fees, early cash-out fees, and other miscellaneous fees charged to users of our platforms (“Other Fees”).

As discussed in more detail within “Critical Accounting Policies and Use of Estimates” under “Note 1. Company and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies,” under Part I, Item 7 herein, revenue from Marketplace Spend Fees is reported on a net basis. Revenue from all other sources, including Managed Services, License Fees, and Other Fees, are reported on a gross basis. We further categorize these sources into two primary groups: (1) Managed Services and (2) SaaS Services, which includes revenue from Marketplace Spend Fees, License Fees, and Other Fees.

We provide services to customers in multiple industry segments, including consumer products, retail/e-tail, lifestyle, technology, and travel. Our business serves advertising and public relations agencies, brands, and companies directly. In many cases, influencer marketing dollars flow through the advertising or public relations agency, even when we have a direct relationship with the brand.

We generate the majority of our revenue from our Managed Services customers. Managed Services accounted for approximately 99% and 96% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. SaaS Services accounted for approximately 1% and 4% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2023, and 2022, respectively.

Changes in how we control and manage our platforms, contractual terms, business practices, or other changes in accounting standards or interpretations may affect our revenue reporting. For more information about our revenue recognition policies, see “Note 1. Summary of Significant Accounting Policies” under Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report.

The majority of our customers are located in the United States (“U.S.”). With the Hoozu acquisition, we have established a beachhead in the Australia region. We have also seen organic global growth in recent years through our efforts in China. We had one customer that accounted for 23% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2023, and one customer that accounted for 29% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2022.

Technology

Our technology platforms span multiple social networks and digital creative services. We aggregate creators in our platforms, which allows us to create scale and choice for marketers. We provide the ability to find and collaborate with our creators based on a variety of software rules, filters, and data enrichment. Our self-service platforms service all business types and sizes, ranging from Fortune 500 customers to small agencies and brands. We provide trackable results for influencer marketing campaigns through tracking links and support for third-party tracking platforms. IZEA technology includes generative AI content creation, content monitoring, dashboards for real-time reporting, and digital asset management.

Privacy and Security

We are committed to protecting the personal privacy of our marketers and creators. Any personal information that we collect is processed in compliance with privacy laws (discussed below, under “Government Regulation”), and we believe that we employ reasonable and appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect personal information.

Product Development

Our product development team is responsible for platform and infrastructure development, application development, user interface, application design, enterprise connectivity, Internet applications and design, quality assurance, documentation, and release management. Among our core strengths is our knowledge of and experience in launching and operating scalable content and influencer marketing marketplaces. Our product development expenses include salaries, bonuses, stock-based compensation, employee benefit costs, and miscellaneous departmental costs related to our development team, along with hosting and software subscription costs, and are included in general and administrative expenses.

Competition

We face competition from multiple companies in the influencer and content marketing categories. Direct and indirect competitors in the influencer marketing space include Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Linqia, and Upfluence. We also face competition in the creator economy from companies such as Fiverr and Upwork. In addition, there are many traditional advertising agencies, public relations firms, and niche consultancies that provide content development and conduct manual influencer outreach programs.

Competition could result in significant price pressure, declining margins, and reductions in our revenue. As more companies have entered the influencer marketing space, it has driven down the price points for influencer marketing software. We have seen this impact our licensing fees over the past several years, and it has caused us to change our pricing strategy for software services. In addition, as we continue our efforts to expand the scope of our services with Flex and IZEA.com we may compete with a greater number of other companies across an increasing range of different services, including in vertical markets where competitors may have advantages in expertise, brand recognition, and other areas. If existing or future competitors develop or offer products or services that provide significant performance, price, creative or other advantages over those offered by us, our business, prospects, results of operations, and financial condition could be negatively affected.

We also compete with traditional advertising media such as direct mail, television, radio, cable, and print for a share of marketers' total advertising budgets. Many current and potential competitors enjoy competitive advantages over us, such as longer operating histories, greater name recognition, larger customer bases, greater access to advertising space on high-traffic websites, and significantly greater financial, technical, sales, and marketing resources.

Proprietary Rights

Proprietary rights are crucial to our success and competitive position. To evolve and secure our proprietary rights, we rely on intellectual property and trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures, and contractual provisions.

As of December 31, 2023, we owned 51 trademarks (32 domestic trademark registrations in the U.S. and 19 foreign registrations on the International Register) and had 6 total pending applications in the U.S., Canada, and Nigeria. During the year ended December 31, 2023, we abandoned 5 inactive U.S. trademarks. As of December 31, 2023, we also owned approximately 363 domain names related to the various aspects of IZEA’s products and services.

Government Regulation

We are subject to many foreign and domestic laws and regulations that affect companies conducting business on the Internet, many of which are still evolving and could be interpreted by regulators or in the courts in ways that could adversely affect our business model. In the U.S. and abroad, laws relating to the liability of providers of online services for activities of their users and other third parties are currently being tested by several claims. These regulations and laws may involve taxation, tariffs, privacy and data protection, consumer protection, content, copyrights, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, and online payment services. In addition, governments may seek to censor content available on our platforms or attempt to block access to our platforms. Accordingly, adverse legal or regulatory developments could substantially harm our business.

We are subject to various federal, state, and international laws and regulations governing privacy, information security, and data protection laws (“Privacy Laws”). Legislators and/or regulators in countries in which we operate are increasingly adopting or revising Privacy Laws. All U.S. states have passed data breach notification laws, and others have adopted or expanded laws and regulations that address the security of personal information and the collection and use of personal information through websites. In particular, California passed a broad-reaching consumer privacy law in June 2018, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, called the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). In response to the CCPA, IZEA posted an updated California Privacy Notice on its websites. Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act (“CDPA”) came into effect on January 1, 2023, which is also when the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) took effect, and new laws are expected to be passed in 2024 in Florida, Montana, Oregon, and Texas. The U.S. Congress also is considering the implementation of a national Privacy Law. Outside the U.S., the European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which became effective May 25, 2018, has an extra-territorial scope and substantial fines (up to 4% of global annual revenue or €20M, whichever is greater). In 2018, Brazil passed a law similar to GDPR and other countries are considering similar laws. Enforcement of Privacy Laws also has increased over the past few years. Accordingly, new, and revised Privacy Laws, together with stepped-up enforcement of existing Privacy Laws, could significantly affect our current and planned privacy, data protection, information security-related practices, our collection, use, sharing, retention, and safeguarding of consumer and/or employee information, and some of our current or planned business activities.

The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act has provisions that limit but do not eliminate our liability for linking to third-party websites. These websites may contain materials that infringe copyrights or other intellectual property rights of third parties. We must comply with the statutory requirements of this act. Complying with these various laws could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business.

As an e-commerce service provider, we are subject to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (the “FTC Act”), which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices, including advertising and marketing on the Internet. Many states have consumer protection laws similar to the FTC Act with the purpose of prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices. In some instances, we are retained by marketers to manage their advertising campaigns through our platforms, thereby increasing our exposure as not only the service provider but also the medium through which advertisements are broadcast. In addition to those requirements, the marketers, creators, and agencies that use our platforms are subject to specific guidelines and regulations regarding online advertising, such as the Dot Com Disclosures - Information about Online Advertising, issued by the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”), the FTC’s Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements, issued in 2015, and the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (known as the Endorsement Guide) which were adopted in 2009, updated and reissued by the FTC in 2013, and further clarified in 2015 and are regularly enforced. The Endorsement Guide, for example, significantly extends the scope of potential liability associated with the use of testimonials and endorsements, including injecting endorsement requirements into advertising methods such as blogging, posting on Instagram, tweeting, and other online postings of sponsored advertisements by a creator. In particular, the Endorsement Guide provides that creators must always clearly and conspicuously disclose the material connection between the creator and the marketer, such as if they received consideration for blogging or posting about a particular product, service, brand, or the like, whether the consideration comprises something tangible (i.e. cash, discounts, objects that are provided to them at no cost, even for testing purposes) or intangible (such as accolades and more prominent future blogging or posting opportunities). In addition, the creator must not make claims about the product or service they are discussing that go beyond what the marketer could say about the product or service. The Endorsement Guide further provides that the marketer should ensure that creators speaking on its behalf are provided guidance and training needed to ensure their claims, statements, and representations are truthful, transparent, and properly substantiated, and monitor the activities of creators speaking on its behalf. If a creator, blogger, agency, or marketer should fail to comply with the Dot Com Disclosures, the Endorsement Guide, or any other FTC rule, regulation, or policy, which may be manifest by making deceptive, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims and representations, failing to disclose a sponsorship relationship or otherwise, then various parties related to the advertising campaign (including the service provider of the platform over which the campaign is managed) may be subject to liability as a result of such non-compliance. In the event it was found that we (or one of our marketer customers) failed to comply with the FTC Act or state consumer protection laws, it could result in the potential imposition of equitable redress or penalties that could include monetary damages, a modification of certain business practices, or an order to cease certain aspects of our operations. Other countries, such as Canada and EU member states, also have laws, regulations, and rules that mirror the FTC Endorsement Guide and similar consumer protection laws and guidance.

More generally, if there is negative consumer perception and mistrust of the practice of compensating creators to endorse the marketers’ specific products, then marketers may become less interested in using influencer marketing platforms like ours as a means for advertising which could, in turn, materially adversely affect our business and financial results.

We are committed to promoting ethical social sponsorship practices and have established terms of service for users of our platforms, which refer to the Endorsement Guide and include one or more of the following:

Mandatory Disclosure. Our terms of service require the disclosure of the sponsored relationship between the marketer and creator. Failure to disclose the sponsored relationship violates our terms of service, which may result in the withholding of payment for the sponsorship and the creator being removed from our network.

Freedom of Choice. Creators are free to choose which brands to work with and what sponsored content they want to publish. Our platforms do not auto-inject a marketer's message into an influencer's social media network.

Authentic Voice. We encourage honesty of opinion in the selection of sponsorships by a creator and similarly we encourage marketers to create opportunities that allow the creator to write the sponsorship in their own words, provided that a creator always adheres to our terms of service and code of ethics which includes disclosing their sponsored relationships at all times while using any of the platforms.

Transparency of Identity. Our platforms are designed to be an open, safe environment for our marketers, creators, and users. We do not cloak the identities of marketers or creators. Both parties involved in a potential transaction can see each other's profiles and make informed decisions before engaging with each other.

Pre-Publication Marketer Review. Marketers may choose to request to review their sponsored content before it is published and to request a change to the sponsored content before publication in the case of factual inaccuracies.

Reporting Violations. We have zero tolerance for violations of our terms of service and encourage the reporting of violations directly to IZEA. If violations are reported, we promptly investigate them and, in appropriate cases, marketers, creators, and users are removed from our network and prohibited from using our sites.

We believe and have included requirements within our terms of service, based on positions taken by certain federal courts and the FTC, that communications and messages disseminated by our platform users are subject to and must comply at all times with CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) requirements.

To date, we have not been materially impacted by the rules governing messaging over social media networks and social sponsorship, including the CAN-SPAM Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. However, we cannot predict the impact of future regulations on us and marketers and creators who use our platforms, nor can we predict the effects of attempts to circumvent our mechanisms designed to ensure compliance.

Employees

As of December 31, 2023, we had 153 employees, of which 152 were full-time employees, including 65 in sales and marketing, 45 in campaign fulfillment, 20 in technology and development, and 23 in administration and finance. None of our employees is represented by a collective bargaining agreement, nor have we experienced any work stoppage. Our future success depends on our continuing ability to attract and retain highly qualified engineers, sales and marketing, account management, and senior management personnel.

Available Information

IZEA Worldwide, Inc. is incorporated in the state of Nevada. Our corporate address is 1317 Edgewater Dr. #1880, Orlando, FL 32804, and our telephone number is (407) 674-6911. We maintain a corporate website at https://izea.com. Our Annual Report, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, including exhibits, and amendments to those reports filed or furnished according to Sections 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, are available free of charge on our website, as soon as reasonably practicable after they have been filed with or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Our SEC reports and other filings can be accessed through the investor’s section of our website, or https://www.sec.gov. Information on our website does not constitute part of this Annual Report or any other report we file or furnish with the SEC.

Investors and others should note that we use social media to communicate with our subscribers and the public about our Company, our services, new product developments, and other matters. Any information that we consider to be material to an investor’s evaluation of our Company will be included in filings accessible through the SEC website and/or may be disseminated using our investor relations website (https://izea.com) and press releases. However, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our Company to also follow our social media channels: @izea on X (formerly Twitter), @izea on Instagram, @izea on TikTok, and IZEA on Facebook. The information contained in these social media channels is not part of and is not incorporated into, or included in, this Annual Report.