IZEA Worldwide, Inc.

Our Mission

Our mission is to make creator economy solutions for marketers. We offer solutions that range from creator agency services to creator technologies to a marketplace that connects marketers with creators. By fostering these connections, we light up the creator economy with IZEAs – social-first content, made by creators, that are culturally relevant and move at the speed of culture.

Corporate Information

IZEA Worldwide, Inc. (together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries, “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 March 2016, the Company formed IZEA Canada, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary incorporated in Ontario, Canada.

The Company provides value through managing custom content workflow, creator search and targeting, bidding, analytics, and payment processing (the “Managed Services”). It also enables creators to monetize their content, creativity, and influence through global brands and marketers. IZEA compensates these creators for producing unique content, such as long and short-form text, videos, photos, status updates, and illustrations, for marketers or distributing such content on behalf of marketers through their websites, blogs, and social media channels.

While most marketers engage the Company to perform the Managed Services on their behalf, marketers may also access IZEA’s platform capabilities that facilitate discovery, engagement, and collaboration between marketers and creators.

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. Social media usage has increased to over 5 billion users worldwide fueling the rapid growth of social media platforms such as YouTube, Meta and TikTok which have democratized the creation of content. In 2024, the number of social media users eclipsed linear television viewers in the United States for the first time ever. This “Social Singularity” marks a significant shift in the marketing landscape and is prompting marketers to allocate more of their marketing spend to the creator economy. Budget spent on influencer marketing campaigns tripled between 2019 and 2025 to more than $9 billion, and the total global addressable market of the creator economy is projected to continue to rise to $480 billion by 2027.

Our Business

IZEA is a technology-enabled influencer marketing company that delivers creator economy solutions for brands through managed services supported by proprietary technology that facilitates engagement and collaboration with social influencers and content creators. We pioneered the influencer marketplace concept in 2006 with the launch of our inaugural platform, PayPerPost. Since that time, we have continued to evolve our services and underlying technology to support the changing needs of our customers, which include large enterprise brands, advertising agencies, and independent content creators.

Our product and service offerings are delivered through the following three areas:

Agency Services: Commonly referred to as “Managed Services,” these represent our primary offering. Through these services, we partner with marketers to develop and execute influencer marketing campaigns, including creator strategy, creator partnerships, creator content, performance media, and social commerce initiatives. These services are delivered by dedicated teams of professionals and are supported by our proprietary technology platform, which enables campaign execution, workflow management, compliance, and performance measurement. Historically, Managed Services have accounted for substantially all of our revenue.

Creator Technologies: We maintain proprietary technology platforms, incorporating AI, that support the management of creator campaigns, creator relationships, and creator transactions. These platforms are primarily used to support the delivery of our managed services and internal operations. Customers may be provided access to certain technology capabilities in connection with managed service engagements to support collaboration, execution, and visibility into campaign performance and results. Certain features of our technology platforms have historically been offered through subscription-based, self-service arrangements. While subscription access to selected solutions remains available, our current focus is on delivering technology-enabled managed services rather than promoting stand-alone software offerings.

Creator Marketplace Capabilities: Our technology platform includes capabilities that facilitate connections and collaboration between brands and creators. These capabilities support creator discovery, campaign participation, and communication between marketers and creators. We have historically made these capabilities available through online marketplace environments, including IZEA.com, which replaced and enhanced the functionality of a legacy marketplace product. Through these capabilities, creators can present their work and availability to marketers, and marketers can identify and engage creators via search and campaign-based outreach. These marketplace-related capabilities are integrated into our broader technology platform and support the execution of influencer marketing programs.

Our Technologies

Our proprietary technology platforms have evolved over time to support the delivery and management of influencer marketing programs and to adapt to changing customer needs and industry dynamics. Our technology is primarily used to enable our managed services offerings and internal operations, while also providing customers with visibility into campaign execution and performance. Our three primary technology platforms are as follows:

Flex. Flex is primarily used by our internal teams to manage influencer marketing programs at scale and to support campaign execution and reporting. Customers may be provided access to certain Flex capabilities in connection with Managed Services engagements to facilitate collaboration, approvals, and visibility into campaign activity and results. We previously introduced additional functionality within Flex to enhance campaign management and operational efficiency. These enhancements included tools to support client review and approval of draft content, client participation in talent selection, campaign budget monitoring, and the integration of AI-assisted tools to support internal workflows and data analysis. Flex consists of multiple functional modules, including creator discovery, content management and analysis, platform integrations, tracking and attribution tools, contact management, and transaction processing, each designed to support the execution and measurement of influencer marketing campaigns.

Marketplace. The Creator Marketplace (“Marketplace”) launched in October 2022 and provides capabilities that facilitate discovery, engagement, and collaboration between marketers and creators. Through the Marketplace, creators can present information about their work and availability, while marketers can identify and engage creators through search and campaign-based outreach mechanisms. These capabilities support creator participation and campaign execution and are integrated into our broader technology platform.

AI-Enabled Tools. We have also provided AI-enabled tools designed to support content creation and operational efficiency within the influencer marketing process. In June 2023, we introduced FormAI, a suite of generative AI tools intended to assist marketers and creators with text and visual content development. Our AI-enabled tools are designed to support the creative process and internal workflows by improving efficiency and reducing manual effort. These tools leverage third-party AI models integrated into our technology environment and are used in connection with our Managed Services and platform capabilities.

We sell influencer marketing and custom content campaigns through a combination of direct sales, account management, and platform-driven demand generation. We target regional, national, and global brands and advertising agencies across enterprise, boutique, and small- and mid-sized business customers.

Client Development (Sales). Our client development organization is focused primarily on new customer acquisition and new logo generation. Team members are responsible for proactively identifying, qualifying, and managing sales opportunities with brands and agencies, including initial contract negotiation and onboarding. Our client development team is primarily based in the United States and Canada and supports both domestic and international customers.

Enterprise Account Management. During 2025, we implemented a dedicated enterprise account management function to support and expand relationships with existing enterprise-level customers. This team is responsible for ongoing client service, campaign execution coordination, and identifying incremental growth opportunities within established accounts. Business development resources are embedded within the enterprise account management team to support account expansion initiatives. In prior periods, these responsibilities were performed primarily by our client development team.

Boutique and Small- and Mid-Sized Business Sales. We also maintain a boutique sales team focused on serving small- and mid-sized business customers. This team supports customers with more standardized solutions and shorter sales cycles and complements our platform-led demand generation efforts.

Demand Generation. We utilize a variety of marketing strategies and platforms to generate demand for our Managed Services and Software-as-a-Service offerings (“SaaS Services”). Our demand-generation activities are designed to attract and qualify potential customers and direct them to the offering best suited to their objectives, whether that is Managed Services, SaaS, or a combination thereof. We view both marketers and creators as participants in our ecosystem and design our marketing programs to support engagement across the customer lifecycle.

Customer Offering Strategy. Our strategy is to offer creator economy solutions that support customers at various stages of their growth, regardless of customer size at entry. Our Managed Services offering is a premium, high-touch solution supported by dedicated teams of professionals tailored to customer needs, while our SaaS offerings are designed to be low-cost and low-touch, requiring limited personnel involvement.

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, TikTok, and YouTube), paid search engine marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, and events.

Customers and Revenue

We generate revenue primarily 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”). Additionally, we generate a limited amount of revenue from access to certain features of our proprietary technology platforms, as well as related transaction and miscellaneous fees (collectively, “SaaS Services Revenue”).

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, certain self-service transaction-based fees are reported on a net basis. Revenue from all other sources, including Managed Services and subscription-based access fees, is reported on a gross basis. For financial reporting purposes, we categorize our revenue between Managed Services and SaaS Services.

Our customer base is primarily enterprise brands across multiple industry segments, supplemented by small- and mid-sized businesses with the potential to scale. We provide services directly to brands and indirectly through advertising and public relations agencies, and influencer marketing spend frequently flows through agency relationships, even where we maintain a direct contractual relationship with the brand.

We generate most of our revenue from our Managed Services customers. Managed Services accounted for approximately 99.3% and 97.7% of our revenue during the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively. SaaS Services accounted for approximately 0.7% and 2.3% of our revenue during the years ended December 31, 2025, and 2024, 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.

Most of our customers are located in North America, with the greatest concentration in the United States. Two customers each accounted for more than 10% of our revenue during the year ended December 31, 2025, and two customers each accounted for more than 10% of our revenue during the year ended December 31, 2024.

Privacy and Security

We are committed to protecting the personal privacy of our marketers and creators. Any personal information 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.

Competition

We face competition from multiple companies in the creator economy and influencer marketing categories. Direct and indirect competitors in the influencer marketing services include Influential, Later, Whalar, Linqia, and Viral Nation. Competitors in the influencer marketing technology space include CreatorIQ, Grin, Aspire, and Captiv8. In addition, many traditional advertising agencies, public relations firms, and niche consultancies provide content development and conduct manual influencer outreach programs. Broader creator economy companies such as Meta, TikTok, and YouTube have the potential to compete with us.

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. We rely on intellectual property and trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures, and contractual provisions to evolve and secure our proprietary rights.

As of December 31, 2025, we owned 33 trademarks (28 domestic trademark registrations in the U.S. and 5 foreign registrations on the International Register) and had 2 total pending applications in the U.S. During the year ended December 31, 2025, we abandoned 23 inactive U.S. trademarks. As of December 31, 2025, we also owned approximately 365 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 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 the 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 regulators in the countries in which we operate are increasingly adopting or revising Privacy Laws. All U.S. states have passed data breach notification laws, and at least 20 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”), which was followed by the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (“CPRA”), which was enacted on January 1, 2023. To comply with this legislation, IZEA posted an updated California Privacy Notice on its websites. Since then, states such as Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Florida, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Iowa, Delaware, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island have all passed laws granting consumers rights to access, delete, and correct their personal data and to opt out of targeted advertising or profiling activities. The U.S. Congress has previously expressed consideration of the implementation of a national Privacy Law, however, no federal privacy law yet exists. In Canada, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, should it become law, would address consumer privacy, personal information and data protection, and AI data governance. It is intended to replace the long-standing Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”). Outside of North America, 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). Similar comprehensive regimes have matured in Brazil (“LGPD”), India (Digital Personal Data Protection Act), China (“PIPL”), and Quebec (Law 25). Enforcement of Privacy Laws also has increased in recent years. Emerging regulations in 2026 are increasingly focused on minors' online safety, restricting the ability to target advertising to users under the age of 18, or for users under the age of 16 to have social media accounts, and requiring age-verification protocols that may impact our influencer campaigns and audience targeting. 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.

IZEA has retained VeraSafe, LLC (“VeraSafe”) to serve as its Data Protection Officer pursuant to EU and UK GDPR regulations. VeraSafe has served in this capacity since January 2025 to help review and monitor IZEA’s practices and processes pertaining to personal data, oversee privacy compliance activities such as fulfilling data subject access requests, reporting data breaches, conducting privacy impact assessments, and acting as a regulatory authority liaison.

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 on third parties’ 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 prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices. In addition to those requirements, the marketers, creators, and agencies that use our platforms or our agency services 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 2024, 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 social media platforms, tweeting, and other online postings of sponsored advertisements by a creator or on behalf of a brand. 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, event access, 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 it. The Endorsement Guide further provides that the marketer should ensure that creators speaking on its behalf are provided guidance and training to ensure their claims, statements, and representations are truthful, transparent, and adequately substantiated, and monitor the activities of creators speaking on its behalf. Suppose 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. In that case, the various parties related to the advertising campaign (including the agency or the service provider of the platform over which the campaign is managed) may be subject to liability due to 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 can 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 the creator to be honest when selecting sponsorships. Similarly, we enable 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, including disclosing their brand relationships at all times in connection with such sponsored campaigns.

Transparency of Identity. Our platforms are designed to be an open, safe environment for 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 request to review their sponsored content before publication 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 infringements 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 the 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, 2025, we had 75 active full-time employees. This number reflects the strategic reduction in human capital costs disclosed in prior SEC filings and ordinary employee attrition. None of our employees are represented by a collective bargaining agreement, and we have not experienced any work stoppages. 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, and 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 relations 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 follow us on LinkedIn. The information contained in these social media channels is not part of and is not incorporated into or included in this Annual Report.