IZEA · Read the filing

izea-20211231

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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021

For the transition period from _________________ to _________________

Commission File No.: 001-37703

IZEA WORLDWIDE, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (407)674-6911

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class Trading Symbol (s) Name of each exchange on which registered

Common Stock, par value $0.0001 per share IZEA The Nasdaq Capital Market

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes oNox

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes oNox

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yesx No o

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes☒ No o

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

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Large accelerated filer ☐ Accelerated filer ☐

Non-Accelerated Filer ☒ Smaller reporting company ☒

Emerging growth company ☐

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. o

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes o No x

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates as of June 30, 2021 (the last business day of the registrant's most recently completed second fiscal quarter) was $150,963,427 based on the closing bid price of the registrant's common stock of $2.55 per share on June 30, 2021 (the last trading day prior to the end of the registrant's most recently completed second fiscal quarter). All executive officers and directors of the registrant and all 10% or greater stockholders have been deemed, solely for the purpose of the foregoing calculation, to be “affiliates” of the registrant.

As of March 22, 2022, there were 62,176,505 shares of our common stock outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

None.

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Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2021

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Page

PART I

Item 1. Business 4

Item 1A. Risk Factors 11

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 23

Item 2. Properties 23

Item 3. Legal Proceedings 23

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 24

PART II

Item 6. Selected Financial Data 25

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 37

Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm 39

Consolidated Balance Sheets as of December 31, 2021 and 2020 41

Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements 46

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 102

Item 9B. Other Information 103

Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections 103

PART III

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 104

Item 11. Executive Compensation 108

Item 14. Principal Accountant Fees and Services 116

PART IV

Item 15. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules 118

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PART I

Explanatory Note

On March 17, 2022, the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors (the “Audit Committee”) of IZEA Worldwide, Inc. ("the Company") concluded, in consultation with the Company's management and BDO USA, LLP ("BDO"), the Company's independent registered public accounting firm, that the Company’s previously issued interim financial statements included in its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended March 31, 2020, June 30, 2020, and September 30, 2020 (collectively, the "Restated Periods") should be restated to apply adjustments to certain liabilities, associated costs, and revenues which are derived from such costs, as described below, and should therefore no longer be relied upon. The Company is restating the financial statements for the Restated Periods in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 (the "2021 Form 10-K"). The Company determined that the previously issued financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the interim periods ended March 31, 2021, June 30, 2021, and September 30, 2021, were not materially impacted, and do not require restatement.

The aggregate effect of the adjustments on revenues is less than 2 percent for the year ended December 31, 2020, and that the effect on 2021 revenues is positive.

During the preparation of the Company's 2021 Form 10-K, management conducted a review of the Company’s recognition of liabilities and associated costs relating to the Company’s managed services within its IZEAx platform ("Managed Services"), in connection with which the Company enters into contracts with marketers for creators to produce sponsored social services content (“Sponsored Content”) and post it on one or more approved social media platforms. The Company's Terms of Service state that Sponsored Content posted in response to a marketer's request (an "Opportunity") must remain linked and live for a minimum of forty-five (45) consecutive days (unless otherwise specified in the Opportunity) to validate the fulfillment of the Opportunity and for the creator to earn compensation for the posted Opportunity. Historically, the Company has reported liabilities and associated costs for Sponsored Content, as well as the related revenues, at the conclusion of the 45-day posting period, such that all liabilities, associated costs, and related revenues of Sponsored Content posted within 45 days prior to the end of a reporting period were recorded in the subsequent reporting period.

Following consultation with the Company's management, the Audit Committee determined that a portion of the liability and associated cost of the Sponsored Content should have been accrued upon its initial posting (delivery) based on the number of posting days during the reporting period in which such Sponsored Content was posted.The Company recognizes its Managed Services revenue using an input method of costs incurred compared to the total of expected costs; as such, the timing of the accrual of Sponsored Content costs affects the related Managed Services revenue recognized during each period.

The Company has analyzed the impact of the adjusted Managed Services cost accrual on revenue in previously reported financial results. Revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2020, is $439,193, or 9%, less than the revenue reported in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for such period, that revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2020, is $85,222, or 3%, less than the revenue reported in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for such period, and that revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2020, is $171,434, or 4%, more than the revenue reported in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for such period. Revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2020 is $524,415, or 7%, less than the revenue reported in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for such year-to-date period, and that revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, is $352,981, or 3%, less than the revenue reported in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for such year-to-date period. Revenue for the twelve months ended December 31, 2020 is $362,348, or 1.98%, less than revenues previously reported for such period. The impacts of the adjustments are summarized in Notes 2 and 13.

The Audit Committee is committed to addressing the issues identified and is conducting a review of the Company’s accounting policies pertaining to the recognition of revenue and costs.

In addition to the standard required financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021, this Annual Report on Form 10-K includes (i) unaudited restated interim financial statements for the quarters ended March 31, 2020, June 30, 2020, and September 30, 2020, (ii) audited revised consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, and (iii) unaudited revised interim financial statements for the quarters ended March 31, 2021, June 30, 2021, and September 30, 2021. Unless otherwise stated, all amounts and disclosures included in this Form 10-K have been revised to reflect the restatement and revisions.

Previously Filed Reports

We believe that presenting all of this information regarding the Restated Periods in this Annual Report allows investors to review all pertinent data in a single presentation. Therefore, we do not plan to amend our previously filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the Restated Periods. Accordingly, investors should no longer rely upon the Company’s previously released financial statements for these periods and any earnings releases or other communications relating to these periods. The

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financial information that has been previously filed or otherwise reported for the Restated Periods is superseded by the information in this Annual Report.

For discussions of the restatement adjustments, see Item 1A, “Risk Factors” and Item 8, “Financial Statements,” including Notes 2 and 13 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This Annual Report on Form 10-K (this “Annual Report”) contains “forward-looking statements” intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements, which are not historical facts contained in this report, including those contained in Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and the notes to our consolidated financial statements, particularly those that utilize terminology such as “may,” “will,” “would,” “could,” “should,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “anticipates,” “estimates,” “believes,” “thinks,” “intends,” “likely,” “projects,” “plans,” “pursue,” “strategy” or “future,” or the negative of these words or other words or expressions of similar meaning, are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on currently available operating, financial and competitive information, and are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Future events and our actual results and financial condition may differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, the following:

•risks related to the Restatement, including, without limitation, potential inquiries from the SEC and/or the Nasdaq Capital Markets, the potential adverse effect on the price of our common stock, and possible claims by our stockholders or otherwise;

•the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations, financial condition, and the worldwide economy;

•the impact of the Ukraine crisis and ramifications of sanctions against Russia;

•customer cancellations;

•any erroneous or inaccurate estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies;

•our ability to raise the additional funding needed to fund our business operation in the future;

•our ability to satisfy the requirements for continued listing of our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market;

•our ability to maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting;

•our ability to protect our intellectual property and other proprietary rights;

•our ability to maintain and grow our business;

•results of any future litigation and costs incurred in connection with any such litigation;

•competition in the industry;

•variability of operating results;

•our ability to maintain and enhance our brand;

•accuracy of tracking the number of user accounts;

•any security breaches or other disruptions compromising our proprietary information and exposing us to liability;

•our development and introduction of new products and services;

•the successful integration of acquired companies, technologies, and assets into our portfolio of software and services;

•marketing and other business development initiatives;

•general government regulation;

•economic conditions, including as a result of health and safety concerns;

•dependence on key personnel;

•the ability to attract, hire, and retain personnel who possess the technical skills and experience necessary to meet the service requirements of our customers;

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•the potential liability concerning actions taken by our existing and past employees;

•any losses or issues we may encounter as a consequence of accepting or holding digital assets;

•risks associated with doing business internationally; and

•the other risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of this Annual Report.

All forward-looking statements in this document are based on current expectations, intentions, and beliefs using information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report; we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

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ITEM 1 – BUSINESS

Our Mission

Our mission is to champion the world's creators by helping them monetize their content, creativity, and influence.

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, IZEA 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.

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

Our Business

We create and operate online marketplaces that connect marketers, including brands, agencies, and publishers, with content creators such as Instagram influencers, TikTok influencers, YouTube stars, designers, photographers, and writers (“creators”). Marketers also engage us to gain access to our industry expertise, data, and analytics. Our primary technology platform, the IZEA Exchange (“IZEAx”), is designed to provide a unified ecosystem that enables the creation and publication of multiple types of content to be completed at scale.

We provide value through managing custom content workflow, creator search and targeting, bidding, analytics, and payment processing. While the majority of marketers engage us to perform these services (the “Managed Services”) on their behalf, they may also use our marketplaces to engage creators for influencer marketing campaigns or to produce custom content on a self-service basis by licensing our technology.

Influencer Marketing. We work with marketers to enable influencer marketing campaigns at scale. A subset of influencer marketing known as “Sponsored Social” is when a company compensates creators to share sponsored content with the creators’ social network followings. This sponsored content is within the body of the content stream. We believe that we pioneered the concept of a marketplace for sponsorships on the social web in 2006 with the launch of our first platform, PayPerPost. We have focused on scaling our product and service offerings ever since, including acquiring TapInfluence in July 2018 and launching Shake and BrandGraph in 2020.

Custom Content.We also work with marketers to augment or replace their content development efforts. Our network of creators produces editorial and marketing content that can be published both online and offline. Our network of creators includes professional journalists, subject matter experts, bloggers, and everyday content creators, allowing our customers to produce content ranging from complex white papers to simple product descriptions. Many of our content customers use this service to create a steady stream of posts for their corporate blogs. We first began offering custom content services in 2015 after acquiring Ebyline, a leading marketplace in the editorial content space, and continued to expand this offering with our acquisition of ZenContent in July 2016, a company that predominantly focused on e-commerce-related asset creation.

Our Platforms

IZEAx. The platform is designed to provide a unified ecosystem that enables the creation and publication of multiple types of custom content through our creators’ websites, blogs, and social media channels, including, among others, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram. We extensively use this platform to manage influencer marketing campaigns on behalf of our marketers. This platform is also available directly to our marketers as a self-service tool and a licensed white label product. IZEAx was engineered from the ground up to replace all of our previous platforms with an integrated offering that is improved and more efficient.

BrandGraph. In March 2020, we launched BrandGraph, a social media intelligence platform. BrandGraph is heavily integrated with IZEAx, and both platforms rely heavily on data from each other, but it is also available as a stand-alone platform. BrandGraph offers marketers an analysis of share-of-voice, engagement benchmarking, category spending estimates, influencer identification, and sentiment analysis. The platform maps and classifies the complex hierarchy of corporation-to-brand relationships by category and associates social content with brands through a proprietary content analysis engine. It aggregates and analyzes content data to provide insights for marketers across their competitive landscapes that are particularly useful to influencer marketing professionals, including our managed services team.

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Shake. In November 2020, we launched Shake, a new online marketplace where buyers can quickly and easily hire creators of all types for influencer marketing, photography, design, and other digital services. The Shake platform is aimed at digital creators seeking freelance “gig” work. Creator’s list available “Shakes” on their accounts on the platform. Marketers select and purchase creative packages from them through a streamlined chat experience, assisted by ShakeBot - a proprietary, artificial intelligence assistant.

Legacy Platforms

Ebyline. In January 2015, we acquired Ebyline and its technology platform to source and compensate creators for the creation and delivery of professional editorial content. Ebyline was initially designed as a self-service content marketplace to replace editorial newsrooms located in the news agencies with a “virtual newsroom” of creators to produce their content needs and handle their workflow. After the acquisition, we began to utilize the creators in the Ebyline platform to create professional custom content for brands, in addition to the self-service functionality used by newspapers. We have been incorporating certain functions of this platform into IZEAx to have one consolidated platform in the future. By December 2019, we migrated all remaining customers into our IZEAx platform and dissolved the Ebyline entity.

ZenContent. In July 2016, we acquired ZenContent, including its custom content creation workflow technology and database of creators. ZenContent’s platform enabled us to produce highly scalable, multi-part content for e-commerce entities and brand customers. The ZenContent platform allowed us to parse work out to a wide array of qualified creators who together could develop custom content assets with unmatched quality, speed, and price. Our campaign fulfillment team utilized this platform to service orders for custom content until December 2020.

TapInfluence. In July 2018, we acquired TapInfluence and its technology platform. TapInfluence marketed and sold software-as-a-service “SaaS” software complementary to IZEA’s existing influencer marketing products and services. We incorporated certain functions of this platform into IZEAx and improved influencer discovery and content workflow to have one consolidated platform. Throughout 2019, users of this platform were migrated over to IZEAx. We discontinued the use of this platform in March 2020.

IZEAx, BrandGraph, Shake, Ebyline,ZenContent, and TapInfluence were designed with the same purpose: to streamline transactions between our internal campaign fulfillment team, marketers, and creators. We utilize these proprietary technologies to create efficiencies and economies of scale for all parties. These platforms' knowledge base and technology provide marketers with access to an extensive network of creators and complete workflow management, content control, payment processing, and related performance tracking.

We believe that IZEAx improves our ability to efficiently match marketplace participants as the number of marketers and creators using the platform increases. To date, we have completed over 3.9 million influencer and content marketing transactions for customers ranging from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. We consider each piece of custom content, sponsored post, or other updates as an individual transaction so long as the creator of that content is being compensated for the transaction.

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 highly controversial among marketers and content creators. The idea was introduced when there were no ads on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, and social media was largely void of corporate marketing messages. Over the past fifteen years, the landscape has dramatically changed. Today, strategic engagement of online influencers is table stakes for modern brands - largely in part 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 as a means 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 not evolved in a meaningful way for the majority of 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 in a marketplace of scale.

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 lack the individual influence and audience needed 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

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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 solves these challenges with targeted, scalable marketplaces that aggregate content creators and marketers. In doing so, we offer an efficient, innovative way for creators and marketers of all sizes to find each other and form a compensated relationship.

Our Business Model

Since our inception in 2006, we have worked diligently to establish and leverage key strengths in our business model, including:

A culture of innovation and creativity. We believe the only way to survive and thrive in our rapidly changing world is to change ahead of it. We are in a state of constant evolution and re-invention; this is “The IZEA Way.” We have created a culture committed to innovation and creativity that challenges convention, takes calculated risks, and breaks new ground. IZEA team members are protective and proud of our culture by applying its “humble, yet hungry” attitude to all facets of our business. Our people and their innovations ultimately provide us with what we see as our most significant competitive advantage.

First-mover advantage. We believe that by pioneering the modern influencer marketing industry and investing heavily in innovation, acquisitions, and marketing, we have acquired a vast amount of industry knowledge, market insights, and technology. Over time, the software foundation we have built is expansive with the amount of actionable data we have accumulated from our network of creators and the execution of customer programs. Those new to the space face a significant technology investment requirement and steep learning curve to compete in a complex and rapidly evolving industry.

Best in class technology. We believe that the feature sets in our platforms are among the most comprehensive for those seeking to execute influencer marketing campaigns. While our industry has a broad and fragmented set of competitors offering various technology solutions, we have developed a complete, enterprise-grade solution for those seeking to execute large-scale influencer marketing campaigns from beginning to end.

Experienced management team, board of directors, and strategic advisors. Our management team includes a highly experienced team of entrepreneurs and executives from the digital media, technology, and entertainment industries and outstanding board members, who are experts in their respective fields. See Item 10 under Part III of this Annual Report for details.

Our Growth Strategy

After over fifteen years of working in and developing the influencer and content marketing categories, we believe our business model is market-tested, and our industry is well-established. Our development efforts have included assembling a diverse and experienced senior management team and engineering team, launching, and optimizing our proprietary marketplaces, developing a cross-platform sales force, and refining our message to the market. Key elements of our strategy to accelerate revenue growth and continue product development include:

Software + Service. IZEA’s flexible client engagement model appeals to agency and brand customers with various need states. We structure content and influencer marketing programs that align with our customers’ goals, resources, and profiles. IZEA clients can license our software to run their programs, hire our team for fully outsourced managed services, or engage us in a hybrid model that combines access to our software with collaborative execution.

Product development. Since 2009, we have invested over $34.1 million in engineering resources and product development, creating a meaningful competitive moat of features and functionality in our platform. We continue to recruit additional engineering and product innovation team members to enhance IZEAx, Shake, and BrandGraph, and to develop new technology ideas within these platforms that complement our mission as a company.

Large network of users. IZEA is a driving force in the broader “creator economy,” allowing everyone from college students and stay-at-home individuals to celebrities and accredited journalists the opportunity to monetize their content, creativity, and influence through our platform. As of December 31, 2021, we had more than 996,500 user accounts in IZEAx. These accounts have connections to over 1,080,000 social media accounts with an approximate aggregate reach of 10.7 billion non-unique fans and followers of IZEAx creators. Our total number of user accounts may be higher than our actual individual creators because some creators may have created multiple user accounts.

Creators can join our platforms for free, but they may also choose to pay to upgrade their accounts to enable additional services and benefits. We compensate these individuals for producing content for our market clients or distributing it on behalf of brands through their websites, blogs, and social media channels. We continually seek ways to increase our creators’ ability to generate revenue.

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By continually developing our creator network, we make our marketplace more attractive to our customers who seek a wide variety of creators to fulfill their content and advertising needs. As marketers utilize our marketplace 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.

Sales and Marketing

We primarily sell influencer marketing and custom content campaigns through our sales team and platforms. We target regional, national, and global brands and advertising agencies in the following ways:

Client Development Team. Our client development team is assigned a geographic region or specific markets, primarily within the United States and Canada. Team members are responsible for identifying and managing sales opportunities to brands and agencies seeking to outsource some or all of the planning and production of their content and advertising needs.

SaaS Sales Team. The SaaS Sales team initiates SaaS license opportunities with brands and agencies who seek to utilize additional functionality on our platforms on a self-service basis to facilitate custom content and influencer marketing campaigns.

Self-Service. IZEA offers a version of IZEAx, called IZEAx Discovery, tailored to customers focused only on identifying influencers. Customers who need influencer discovery software can license this technology by signing up directly with a credit card on the IZEA website without speaking to a sales representative. Our Shake platform is 100% self-service and has no sales team. Marketers who would like to hire creators do so by entering their credit card information on the Shake website to purchase a “Shake” from a creator.

Industry Acumen. Our team possesses strong marketing and advertising background. We focus our corporate marketing efforts on increasing brand awareness, communicating each of 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 awareness of our brand 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., Facebook and YouTube), paid search engine marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, and virtual events.

Customers and Revenue

We generate 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 IZEAx and Shake platforms (“Marketplace Spend Fees”); (3) revenue from license and subscription fees charged to access the IZEAx and BrandGraph 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 94% and 87% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively. SaaS Services accounted for approximately 6% and 13% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively.

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

The majority of our customers are located in the United States and Canada. We had one customer that accounted for 14% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and one customer that accounted for 13% of our revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2020. Revenue from our Canadian customers accounted for approximately $0.6 million (2%) and $1.0 million (6%) of our revenues during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively.

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Technology

IZEAx and Shake 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 by automatically embedding tracking links and pixels and support for third-party tracking. IZEA technology includes content review and approval, 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 under our Privacy Notice, and 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, commissions, stock-based compensation, employee benefit costs, and miscellaneous departmental costs related to our development team, along with hosting and software subscription costs. These costs were approximately $5.9 million and $3.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively, and are included in general and administrative expenses.

We launched IZEAx in March 2014 and unveiled our latest version 3.0 of the platform in April 2019. We continue to add new features and additional functionality to this platform each year. These new features enable our platform to facilitate the contracting, workflow, and delivery of direct content and provide for invoicing, collaborating, and direct payments for our SaaS customers. We incurred and capitalized software development costs of zero and $363,793 in our balance sheet during the years ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively.

Our team believes that relentless innovation is the only way to achieve long-term growth. We consistently invest in new technology inside and outside of our current software platforms. The launch of Shake and BrandGraph during the pandemic in 2020 underscores that commitment. We intend to continue to invest in creating new technology additions that complement our core offerings.

Competition

We face competition from multiple companies in the influencer and content marketing categories. Direct and indirect competitors in the influencer marketing space include Facebook, 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. In addition, as we continue our efforts to expand the scope of our services with IZEAx, Shake, and BrandGraph, 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, 2021, we owned 51 trademarks (35 domestic trademark registrations in the United States and 16 foreign registrations on the International Register) and had 10 total pending applications in the United States, Canada, and Nigeria. During the year ended December 31, 2021, we abandoned 2 inactive U.S. trademarks. As of December 31, 2021, we also owned approximately 343 domain names related to the various aspects of IZEA’s products and services.

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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 United States 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”) will come into effect on January 1, 2023, which is also when the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) will take effect. The U.S. Congress also is considering the implementation of a national Privacy Law. Outside the U.S., the EU’s 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

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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. By default, a “sponsorship” cannot be published through the platform unless a phrase or paragraph disclosing the sponsored relationship is included. For example, a creator is required to select one of several disclosure phrases such as “sponsored,” “advertisement” or “ad” before the publication of a tweet or a post. Other social sponsorship forms may be monitored through a Disclosure Audit tool that monitors posts on an ongoing basis to ensure they continue to include disclosure after the initial posts are approved. 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 sponsorships 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 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, 2021, we had a total of 131 employees, of which 125 were full-time employees, including 44 in sales and marketing, 38 in campaign fulfillment, 33 in technology and development, and 16 in administration and finance. None of our employees is represented by a collective bargaining agreement, nor have we experienced any work stoppage. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good. Our future success depends on our continuing ability to attract and retain highly qualified engineers, sales and marketing, account management, and senior management personnel.

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Available Information

IZEA was founded in February 2006 under the name PayPerPost, Inc. and became a public company incorporated in the state of Nevada in May 2011. Effective August 20, 2018, we changed our name from IZEA, Inc. to IZEA Worldwide, Inc.

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 Twitter, @izea on Instagram, 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.

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ITEM 1A – RISK FACTORS

You should carefully consider the factors discussed under this item regarding the numerous and varied risks, known and unknown, that may prevent us from achieving our goals. If any of these risks occur, our business, financial condition, or results of operation may be materially and adversely affected. In such a case, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and investors could lose all or part of their investment. These risk factors may not identify all risks that we face, and our operations could also be affected by factors that are not presently known to us or that we currently consider to be immaterial to our operations.

Risks Related to our Business and Industry

We have a history of annual net losses, expect future losses, and cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability.

We have incurred significant net losses and negative cash flow from operations for most periods since our inception, which has resulted in a total accumulated deficit of $73.6 million as of December 31, 2021. For the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, we had a net loss of $3.1 million, including a $5.4 million loss from operations. We have not achieved profitability and cannot be certain that we will be able to realize sufficient revenue to achieve profitability. If we achieve profitability, we may not be able to sustain it. Therefore, we may need to raise capital through new financings, which could include equity financing, such as additional issuances of common stock under our “at the market offering” program, which may be dilutive to stockholders, or debt financing, which would likely restrict our ability to borrow from other sources. In addition, securities we issue may contain rights, preferences, or privileges senior to those of the rights of our current stockholders. There can be no assurance that additional funds will be available on terms attractive to us, or at all. If adequate funds are not available, we may be required to curtail or reduce our operations or forced to sell or dispose of our rights or assets. An inability to raise adequate funds on commercially reasonable terms would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operation, and financial condition, including the possibility that a lack of funds could cause our business to fail and liquidate with little or no return to investors.

Our business has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the continuing impacts of COVID-19 are highly unpredictable and could have a significant adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, and cash flow in the future.

Our operations, sales, and finances have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect the health and safety of our employees, we took precautionary action and directed all staff to work from home effective March 16, 2020, and we allowed the leases for our company headquarters and temporary office spaces to expire at the end of their terms throughout 2020. We have not experienced any major declines in operating efficiency in our remote working environment and have decided to continue our work-from-home policy indefinitely as a virtual-first employer.

While we are able to maintain full operations remotely, the economic conditions caused by COVID-19 negatively impacted the business activity of our customers in 2020. We observed changes in advertising decisions, timing, and spending priorities from brand and agency customers, which resulted in a negative impact on our revenue in 2020.

Since the third quarter of 2020, we have seen continued increases in Managed Services bookings and net orders from customers, through the fourth quarter of 2021. That growth in bookings led to a 63% growth in overall revenue in the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 from the same period in 2020. While we have seen an increase in Managed Services bookings, there is still a risk that bookings will not be recognized as revenue if customers cancel prior to the performance of service.

We will continue to actively monitor the COVID-19 situation and may take further actions altering business operations that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders, or as required by federal, state, or local authorities. It is not clear what the potential effects any such alterations or modifications may have on our business, including the effects on our customers, employees, and prospects, or on our future financial results.

We have transitioned to a remote workforce, which will subject us to certain operational challenges and risks and potential harm to our business.

In light of the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, specifically stay-at-home orders imposed by certain states and localities, we did not enter into a new lease for our corporate headquarters in Winter Park, Florida or our Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Canada and additionally vacated the various co-working facilities previously used by our team members. As a result, our workforce has shifted from in-person to remote work, and we are subject to the challenges and risks of having a remote workforce. For example, certain security systems in homes or other remote workplaces may be less secure than those previously used in our offices, which may subject us to increased security risks, including cybersecurity-related events, and expose us to risks of data or financial loss and associated disruptions to our business operations. Members of our workforce who access company data and systems remotely may not have access to robust technology, which could cause the networks, information systems, applications, and other tools available to those workers to be more limited or less reliable.

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We may also be exposed to risks associated with the locations of remote workers, including compliance with local laws and regulations or exposure to compromised internet infrastructure. Allowing members of our workforce to work remotely may create intellectual property risk if employees create intellectual property on our behalf while residing in a jurisdiction with unenforced or uncertain intellectual property laws. Further, if employees fail to inform us of changes in their work location, we may be exposed to additional risks without our knowledge. The transition to remote working may also subject us to other operational challenges and risks. For example, our shift to remote working may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain personnel who prefer an in-person work environment. Operating our business remotely could have a negative impact on our corporate culture, decrease the ability of our workforce to collaborate and communicate effectively, decrease innovation and productivity, or negatively affect workforce morale. If we are unable to effectively transition to a fully remote workforce, manage the cybersecurity and other risks of remote work, and maintain our corporate culture and workforce morale, our business could be harmed or otherwise negatively impacted.

The Ukraine crisis could have a significant adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, and cash flow in the future.

The Ukraine crisis raises a host of potential threats and risk factors to consider even though we do not conduct business directly in the Ukraine or Russia. Sanctions brought against Russia will impact the import, export, sale, and supply of goods and services with companies located in the US and other regions. Many companies have ceased all operations in Russia with near and short term losses expected in the millions. This will have a negative impact on the global economy and effect economic and capital markets. A downturn in the economy could drive our customers to cancel or reduce existing bookings, which will result in a reduction in revenue.

In light of the dramatic sanctions imposed against Russia, we need to consider the threat of a cyber-attack. The US Cyber-security and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) recently issued a warning of the risk of Russian cyber-attacks on US networks and critical infrastructure. While we do not think we are a likely target of a cyber-attack, we will be diligent in our controls over IT and ensuring the protection of our companies, employees, vendors, and customers data. If we do fall victim to such attack, it could have an adverse effect on our business operations.

Impairment of our intangible assets has resulted in significant charges that adversely impact our operating results.

We assess the potential impairment of goodwill on an annual basis, as well as whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying value may not be recoverable. In March 2020, we identified a triggering event due to the reduction in projected revenue related to COVID-19 and the continuation of a market capitalization below our carrying value and uncertainty for recovery given the volatility of the capital markets surrounding COVID-19. We performed an interim assessment of goodwill and determined that the carrying value of the Company’s reporting unit as of March 31, 2020, exceeded the fair value. Therefore, we recorded a $4.3 million impairment of goodwill in the twelve months ended December 31, 2020. In October 2021, the time of our annual review of goodwill and our finite-lived intangible assets, we determined that there were no triggering events requiring further analysis. Future adverse changes in these or other unforeseeable factors could result in further impairment charges that would impact our results of operations and financial position in the reporting period identified.

We may experience losses or issues relating to transacting in and holding digital assets.

The use of digital assets to buy and sell goods and services is part of a new and rapidly evolving way of doing business. Growth in the adoption and use of digital assets is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. Market valuation of digital assets is highly volatile and could result in losses. Currently, digital assets are treated as an intangible asset and must be impaired if a triggering event occurs. The assets are impaired if the fair market value falls below the carrying value. Governmental regulations could also impose tighter restrictions on transacting in digital assets, such as anti-money laundering compliance.

We make numerous estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies and these estimates create complexity in our accounting. If our accounting is erroneous or based on assumptions that change or prove to be incorrect, our operating results could change from investor expectations, which could cause our stock price to fall.

We are required to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States, or GAAP. Such estimates and assumptions include but are not limited to, judgments related to revenue recognition, stock based compensation, credit risk, and values surrounding software development, intangible assets and goodwill, and their economic useful lives.

Various factors contribute to complexity in our accounting. For example, the recognition of our revenue is governed by certain criteria that determine whether we report revenue either on a gross basis, as a principal, or net basis, as an agent, depending upon the nature of the sales transaction. Changes in how we control and manage our platforms, our contractual terms, our business practices, or other changes in accounting standards or interpretations, may change the reporting of our revenue on a gross to net or net to gross basis. As a result, we may experience significant fluctuations in our revenue depending

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on the nature of our sales and our reporting of such revenue and related accounting treatment, without any change in our underlying business or net income. Our guidance or estimates about the combination of gross or net revenue are based upon the volumes and characteristics that we believe will be the mix of revenue during the period. Those estimates and assumptions may be inaccurate when made or may be rendered inaccurate by subsequent changes in circumstances, such as changing the characteristics of our offerings or particular transactions in response to client demands, market developments, regulatory pressures, acquisitions, and other factors. In addition, we may incorrectly extrapolate from revenue recognition treatment of prior transactions to future transactions that we believe are similar, but that ultimately are determined to have different characteristics that dictate different revenue reporting treatment. These factors may make our financial reporting more complex and difficult for investors to understand, may make a comparison of our results of operations to prior periods or other companies more difficult, may make it more difficult for us to give accurate guidance, and could increase the potential for reporting errors.

Further, our acquisitions have imposed purchase accounting requirements, required us to integrate accounting personnel, systems, and processes, necessitated various consolidation and elimination adjustments, and imposed additional filing and audit requirements. An ongoing evolution of our business, changes in underlying GAAP, and any future acquisitions will compound these complexities. Our operating results may be adversely affected if we make accounting errors or our judgments prove to be wrong, assumptions change or actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our operating results to fall below investor expectations or guidance we may have provided, resulting in a decline in our stock price and potential legal claims.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable laws and regulations could be impaired.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal controls, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations or prevent fraud, which may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, the value of our common stock.

A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the company’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. We cannot assure you that any existing material weaknesses have been identified, or that we will not in the future identify material weaknesses. Any failure to maintain effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations and could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

If we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, which would cause the price of our common stock to decline, and we may be subject to investigation or sanctions by the SEC. Furthermore, investor perceptions of our company may suffer if, in the future, material weaknesses are found, and this could cause the price of our common stock to decline.

We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, and this or other material weaknesses, or inadequate remediation measures, could impair our ability to report accurate financial information in a timely manner, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act). As disclosed in Item 9A. “Controls and Procedures”, our management identified a material weakness relating to the error in our presentation of revenues and classification of expenses in our consolidated statements of operations. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the company’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. As a result of this material weakness, our management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2021, based on the criteria set forth by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013). If our remedial measures are insufficient to address the material weakness, or if additional material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control are discovered or occur in the future, our consolidated financial statements may contain material misstatements and may not be available in a timely manner and we could be required to restate our financial statements which could lead to substantial additional costs for accounting and legal fees. We cannot assure you that the measures we have taken to date, or any measures we may take in the future, will be sufficient to avoid potential future material weaknesses.

Historically, we have not relied upon patents to protect our proprietary technology, and our competitors may be able to offer similar products andservices, which would harm our competitive position.

Our success depends upon our proprietary technology. We do not have registered patents on any of our current platforms because we have determined that the costs of patent prosecution outweigh the benefits given the alternative of

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reliance upon copyright law to protect our computer code and other proprietary technology and properties. In addition to copyright laws, we rely upon service mark and trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures, and contractual provisions to establish and protect our proprietary rights. As part of our confidentiality procedures, we enter into non-disclosure agreements with our employees and consultants. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our products or to obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary or develop similar technology independently. Policing unauthorized use of our products is difficult, and while we are unable to determine the extent to which piracy of our software products exists, software piracy can be expected to be a persistent problem. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect proprietary rights to as great an extent as do the laws of the United States, and effective copyright, trademark, trade secret, and patent protection may not be available in those jurisdictions. Our means of protecting our proprietary rights may not be adequate to protect us from the infringement or misappropriation of such rights by others, and we cannot assure you that our competitors will not independently develop similar technology, duplicate our products and services, or design around any intellectual property rights we hold.

We cannot provide any assurance that our proprietary rights with respect to our products or services will be viable or have value in the future since the validity, enforceability, and type of protection of proprietary rights in Internet-related industries are uncertain and still evolving.

If third parties claim that we infringe their intellectual property rights, it may result in costly litigation.

We cannot assure you that third parties will not claim our current or future products or services infringe on their intellectual property rights. Any such claims, with or without merit, could cause costly litigation that could consume significant management time. As the number of product and services offerings in our market increases and functionalities increasingly overlap, companies such as ours may become increasingly subject to infringement claims. These claims, even if not meritorious, could be expensive to defend and could divert management's attention from operating our business. These claims also might require us to enter into royalty or license agreements. If required, we may not be able to obtain such royalty or license agreements or obtain them on terms acceptable to us.

Further, in recent years, there has been significant litigation in the United States involving patents and other intellectual property rights, particularly in the software and Internet-related industries. If we become liable to third parties for infringing their intellectual property rights, we could be required to pay a substantial award of damages and to develop non-infringing technology, obtain a license or cease selling the products that contain the infringing intellectual property. We may be unable to develop non-infringing technology or obtain a license on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.

Intense competition in our target markets could impair our ability to grow and to achieve profitability.

The market for influencer and content marketing is highly competitive. We expect this competition to continue to increase, in part because there are no significant barriers to entry to our industry for those that operate in a Managed Services or an agency-type model. Increased competition may result in reduced pricing for managed campaigns, reduced margins, and reduced revenue as a result of lost market share. Our principal competitors include other companies that provide marketers with Internet advertising solutions and companies that offer pay-per-click search services.

Within the enterprise software unit of IZEA’s business (“SaaS Services”), while there is a higher technological barrier to entry, IZEA is vulnerable to new entrants with access to fresh capital and the ability to capitalize upon previous research and development investments made by us. This is particularly challenging given the minimal opportunity to protect our internet-based software via patents.

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. As a result, we may be unable to compete successfully. If we fail to compete successfully, we could lose customers and our revenue and results of operations could decline.

In addition, as we continue our efforts to expand the scope of our services, we may compete with a greater number of other media 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 are continuing to develop our IZEAx platform and have transitioned certain features and customers from our legacy Ebyline and TapInfluence platforms. Our updated IZEAx, Shake, and BrandGraph platforms may not achieve sufficient market acceptance to be commercially viable for open marketplace or SaaS services.

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In April 2019, we released version 3.0 of IZEAx, which allows marketers to make offers that require a single creator to complete multiple tasks or deliverables. Throughout the remainder of 2019, we continued to add additional features to support our SaaS partners and integrate the Ebyline and TapInfluence platform offerings for custom content services within our IZEAx platform. By the end of 2019, nearly all of the Ebyline and TapInfluence customers and creators were migrated off of those platforms and onto the IZEAx platform. With the merging of the two platforms into IZEAx, there is a risk of decreased revenue from marketers if they do not understand the changes or do not believe that the IZEAx platform can provide them with a similar or improved service from what they received in the Ebyline or TapInfluence platforms. If our marketers and creators do not perceive this platform to be of high value and quality, we may not be able to retain them or acquire new marketers and creators.

Shake and BrandGraph were both officially launched in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to invest significant engineering resources into the development and improvement of these platforms and the creation of new technology additions that complement our core offerings. The Shake and BrandGraph platforms and models are new to IZEA and we are still in the very early days of building a customer base for these products. We may fail to achieve significant marketplace inventory in Shake to attract enough buyers and we may fail to create enough product differentiation among social data platforms to drive adoption of BrandGraph. We cannot provide any assurances of the short or long-term commercial success or growth of our platforms. There is no assurance that the amount of money being allocated for the platforms will be sufficient to complete them, or that such completion will result in a competitive edge, significant revenues, or profit for us.

We depend on our ability to attract and retain customers that are prepared to offer products or services on compelling terms through IZEAx and Shake. Additionally, we rely on marketers who purchase direct custom content from our creators on our platforms. We must continue to attract and retain customers to increase revenue and achieve profitability. If existing or future competitors develop or offer products or services that provide significant performance, price, creative or other advantages over this platform, demand for our platforms may decrease. In addition, we may experience attrition in our customers in the ordinary course of business resulting from several factors, including losses to competitors, mergers, closures, or bankruptcies. If we are unable to attract new customers in numbers sufficient to grow our business, or if too many customers are unwilling to offer products or services with compelling terms to our creators through our platforms, or if creators stop offering their services through our platform, our operating results will be adversely affected.

Our total number of user accounts may be higher than the number of our actual individual marketers or creators and may not be representative of the number of persons who are active users.

Our total number of user accounts in the IZEAx and Shake platform may be higher than the number of our actual individual marketers and creators because some may have created multiple accounts for different purposes, including different user connections. We define a user connection as a social account or blog that has been added to IZEAx and Shake under a user account. One user can add as many user connections as they like, and it is common for talent managers and large publishers to add several connections under a single account. Given the challenges inherent in identifying these creators, we do not have a reliable system to accurately identify the number of actual individual creators, and thus we rely on the number of total user connections and user accounts as our measure of the size of our user base. In addition, the number of user accounts includes the total number of individuals that have completed registration through a specific date, fewer individuals who have unsubscribed, and should not be considered as representative of the number of persons who continue to actively create to fulfill the sponsorships offered through our platforms. Many users may create an account but may not actively participate in marketplace activities.

Delays in releasing enhanced versions of our products and services could adversely affect our competitive position.

As part of our strategy, we expect to periodically release enhanced versions of IZEAx and related services. Even if our new versions contain the features and functionality our customers want, in the event we are unable to timely introduce these new product releases, our competitive position may be harmed. We cannot assure you that we will be able to complete the development of currently planned or future products in a timely and efficient manner. Due to the complexity of these products, internal quality assurance testing and customer testing of pre-commercial releases may reveal product performance issues, undesirable feature enhancements, or additional desirable feature enhancements that could lead us to postpone the release of these new versions. In addition, the reallocation of resources associated with any postponement would likely cause delays in the development and release of other future products or enhancements to our currently available products. Any delay in releasing other future products or enhancements of our products could cause our financial results to be adversely impacted.

We rely on third-party social media platforms to provide the mechanism necessary to deliver influencer marketing, and any change in the platform terms, costs, availability, or access to these technologies could adversely affect our business.

We rely on third-party social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to serve as the mechanism for publishing influencer marketing content to targeted audiences, to deliver our influencer marketing services to our customers. These platforms include technologies that provide some of the core functionality required to operate the influencer marketing portion of our platform, as well as functionalities such as user traffic reporting, ad-serving, content delivery services, discovering services, and metrics. There can be no assurance that these providers will continue to make all or

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any of their technologies available to us on reasonable terms, or at all. Third-party social media platforms may start charging fees or otherwise change their business models in a manner that impedes our ability to use their technologies. In any event, we have no control over these companies or their decision-making for granting us access to their social media platforms or providing us with analytical data, and any material change in the current terms, costs, availability, or use of their social media platforms or analytical data could adversely affect our business.

Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and by our customers and their end-users. Internet access providers or distributors may be able to block, degrade or charge for access to our content, which could lead to additional expenses to us and our customers and the loss of end-users and advertisers.

Products and services such as ours depend on our ability and the ability of our customers' users to access the Internet. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have, or in the future may have, significant market power in the broadband and Internet access marketplace, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and government-owned service providers. Some of these providers may take or have stated that they may take, measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of user access to products or services such as ours by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate product or service offerings such as ours, or by charging increased fees to businesses such as ours to provide content or to have users access that content. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) released an order, commonly referred to as net neutrality, that, among other things, prohibited (i) the impairment or degradation of lawful Internet traffic based on content, application, or service and (ii) the practice of favoring some Internet traffic over other Internet traffic based on the payment of higher fees. In December 2017, the FCC voted to overturn the net neutrality regulations imposed by the 2015 order. Internet service providers in the U.S. may now be able to impair or degrade the use of or increase the cost of using our products or services. Such interference could result in a loss of existing viewers, subscribers, and advertisers, and increased costs, and could impair our ability to attract new viewers, subscribers, and advertisers, thereby harming our revenues and growth.

Fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates could result in unanticipated losses that could adversely affect our results of operations and financial position.

We are exposed to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations because a portion of our sales, expenses, assets, and liabilities are denominated in foreign currencies. Changes in the value of foreign currencies, particularly the Canadian dollar, affect our results of operations and financial position. With respect to international sales initially priced using U.S. dollars as a cost basis, a decrease in the value of foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar would make our products less price competitive. Once the product is sold at a fixed foreign currency price, we could experience foreign currency gains or losses that could have a material effect on our operating results.

New tax treatment of companies engaged in Internet commerce may adversely affect the commercial use of our services and our financial results.

Due to the global nature of social media and our services, various states or foreign countries might attempt to regulate our transmissions or levy sales, income, or other taxes relating to our activities. Tax authorities at the international, federal, state, and local levels are currently reviewing the appropriate treatment of companies engaged in Internet commerce. New or revised international, federal, state, or local tax regulations may subject us or our creators to additional sales, income, and other taxes. We cannot predict the effect of current attempts to impose sales, income, or other taxes on commerce over social media. New or revised taxes and, in particular, sales taxes, VAT, and similar taxes would likely increase the cost of doing business online and decrease the attractiveness of advertising and selling goods and services over social media. New taxes could also create significant increases in internal costs necessary to capture data and collect and remit taxes. Any of these events could have an adverse effect on our business and the results of operations.

We may become subject to government regulation and legal uncertainties that could reduce demand for our products and services orincrease the cost of doing business, thereby adversely affecting our financial results.

As described in the section “Business - Government Regulation,” we are subject to laws and regulations applicable to businesses generally and certain laws or regulations directly applicable to service providers for advertising and marketing Internet commerce. Due to the increasing popularity and use of social media, it is possible that some laws and regulations may become applicable to us or may be adopted in the future concerning social media covering issues such as:

•truth-in-advertising;

•user privacy;

•taxation;

•right to access personal information;

•copyrights;

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•distribution; and

•characteristics and quality of services.

The applicability of existing laws governing issues such as property ownership, copyrights, and other intellectual property, encryption, taxation, libel, and export or import matters to social media platforms is uncertain. The vast majority of these laws were adopted before the broad commercial use of social media platforms and related technologies. As a result, they do not contemplate or address the unique issues of social media and related technologies. Changes to these laws intended to address these issues, including some recently proposed changes, could create uncertainty in the social media marketplace. Such uncertainty could reduce demand for our services or increase the cost of doing business due to increased costs of litigation or increased service delivery costs.

Our influencer marketing business is subject to the risks associated with word-of-mouth advertising and endorsements, suchas violations of “truth-in-advertising” laws, the FTC Endorsement Guide, and other similar global regulatory requirements and, more generally, loss of consumer confidence.

As the practice of targeted advertising is increasingly scrutinized by both regulators and the industry alike, a greater emphasis has been placed on educating consumers about their privacy choices on the Internet and providing them with the right to opt-in or opt-out of targeted advertising. The common thread throughout both targeted advertising and the FTC requirements described in detail in the section “Business - Government Regulation” is the increased importance placed on transparency between the marketer and the consumer to ensure that consumers know the difference between “information” and “advertising” on the Internet and are allowed to decide how their personal information will be used in the manner to which they are marketed. There is a risk regarding negative consumer perception of the practice of “undisclosed compensation” of social media users to endorse specific products. As described in the section “Business - Government Regulation,” we undertake various measures through controls across our platforms and by monitoring and enforcing our code of ethics to ensure that marketers and creators comply with the FTC's Endorsement Guide (and analogous laws and guidance in other countries) when utilizing our websites, but if competitors and other companies do not, it could create a negative overall perception for the industry. Not only will readers stop relying on blogs for useful, timely, and insightful information that enrich their lives by having access to up-to-the-minute information that often bears different perspectives and philosophies, but a lack of compliance will almost inevitably result in greater governmental oversight and involvement in an already-highly regulated marketplace. A pervasive overall negative perception caused by a failure of our preventative measures or by others not complying with the FTC's Endorsement Guide (among the FTC's other acts, regulations, and policies, and among analogous laws and guidance in other countries,) could result in reduced revenue and results of operations and higher compliance costs for us.

Failure to comply with federal, state, and international privacy laws and regulations, or the expansion of current or the enactment of new privacy laws or regulations, could adversely affect our business.

A variety of federal, state, and international laws and regulations govern the collection, use, retention, sharing, and security of personal information (“Privacy Laws”). Privacy Laws are evolving and subject to potentially differing interpretations. The European Union (“EU”) adopted the GDPR, which went into effect in May 2018 and requires companies to satisfy stricter requirements regarding the handling of personal and sensitive data, including its collection, use, protection, and the ability of persons whose data is stored to correct or delete such data about themselves. EU Member States also are enacting national GDPR-implementing laws that are in some cases stricter or different from GDPR. In 2018, Brazil enacted a law similar to GDPR and other countries are expanding or considering their Privacy Laws to follow suit. Complying with these new and expanded Privacy Laws will cause us to incur substantial operational costs or may require us to change our business practices. For example, noncompliance with the GDPR could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities or others and fines up to the greater of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenues as well as damage to our reputation and brand. We also may find it necessary to establish systems to effectuate cross-border personal data transfers of personal information originating from the European Economic Area, Australia, Japan, and other non-U.S. jurisdictions, which may involve substantial expense and distraction from other aspects of our business.

We have made public certain statements about our privacy practices concerning the collection, use, and disclosure of creators' personal information on our websites and platforms. Several Internet companies have incurred penalties for failing to abide by the representations made in their public-facing privacy notices. In addition, several states have adopted legislation that requires businesses to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices to protect sensitive personal information and to provide notice to consumers in the event of a security breach. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to comply with our public-facing privacy notices, FTC requirements or orders or other federal, state, or international privacy or consumer protection-related laws, regulations, or industry self-regulatory principles could result in claims, proceedings, or actions against us by governmental or other entities or the incurring by us of other liabilities, which could adversely affect our business. In addition, a failure or perceived failure to comply with industry standards or with our privacy policies and practices could result in a loss of creators or marketers and adversely affect our business. Federal, state, and international governmental

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authorities continue to evaluate the privacy implications of targeted advertising, such as the use of cookies and other tracking technology. The regulation of these cookies and other current online advertising practices could adversely affect our business.

Our business depends on a strong brand, and if we are not able to maintain and enhance our brand, or if we receive unfavorable media coverage, our ability to expand our base of creators and marketers will be impaired and our business and operating results will be harmed.

We believe that the brand identity that we have developed has significantly contributed to the success of our business. We also believe that maintaining and enhancing the “IZEA” brand is critical to expanding our base of creators and marketers. Maintaining and enhancing our brand may require us to make substantial investments and these investments may not be successful. If we fail to promote, maintain, and protect the “IZEA” brand, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition will be materially and adversely affected. We anticipate that, as our market becomes increasingly competitive, maintaining and enhancing our brand may become increasingly difficult and expensive. Unfavorable publicity or consumer perception of our platforms, applications, practices or service offerings, or the offerings of our marketers, could adversely affect our reputation, resulting in difficulties in recruiting, decreased revenue, and a negative impact on the number of marketers and the size of our creator base, the loyalty of our creators and the number and variety of sponsorships we offer each day. As a result, our business, prospects, results of operation, and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.

Our business depends on our ability to maintain and scale the network infrastructure necessary to operate our platforms and applications, and any significant disruption in service on our platforms and applications could result in a loss of creators or marketers.

Creators and marketers access our services through our platforms and applications. Our reputation and ability to acquire, retain, and serve our creators and marketers are dependent upon the reliable performance of our platforms and applications and the underlying network infrastructure. If our creator base continues to grow, we will need an increasing amount of network capacity and computing power. We have spent and expect to continue to spend substantial amounts for data centers and equipment and related network infrastructure to handle the traffic on our platforms and applications. The operation of these systems is expensive and complex and could result in operational failures. If our creator base or the amount of traffic on our platforms and applications grows more quickly than anticipated, we may be required to incur significant additional costs. Interruptions in these systems, whether due to system failures, computer viruses, or physical or electronic break-ins, could affect the security or availability of our platforms and applications, and prevent our creators and marketers from accessing our services. A substantial portion of our network infrastructure is hosted by third-party providers. Any disruption in these services or any failure of these providers to handle existing or increased traffic could significantly harm our business. Any financial or other difficulties these providers face may adversely affect our business, and we exercise little control over these providers, which increases our vulnerability to problems with the services they provide. If we do not maintain or expand our network infrastructure successfully or if we experience operational failures, we could lose current and potential creators and marketers or transactions between the two groups, which could harm our operating results and financial condition.

If our security measures are breached, or if our services are subject to attacks that degrade or deny the ability of users to access our platforms, our platforms and applications may be perceived as not being secure, marketers and creators may curtail or stop using our services, and we may incur significant legal and financial exposure.

Our platforms and applications and the network infrastructure that is hosted by third-party providers involve the storage and transmission of marketer and creator proprietary information, and security breaches could expose us to a risk of loss of this information, litigation, and potential liability. Our security measures may be breached due to the actions of outside parties, employee error, malfeasance, security flaws in the third-party hosting service that we rely upon, or any number of other reasons and, as a result, an unauthorized party may obtain access to our data or our marketers' or creators' data. Additionally, outside parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, marketers, or creators to disclose sensitive information to gain access to our data or our marketers' or creators' data. Although we do have security measures in place, we have had instances where some customers have used fraudulent credit cards to pay for our services. While these breaches of our security did not result in material harm to our business, any future breach or unauthorized access could result in significant legal and financial exposure, damage to our reputation, and a loss of confidence in the security of our platforms and applications that could potentially have an adverse effect on our business. Because the techniques used to obtain and use unauthorized credit cards, obtain unauthorized access, disable, or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and often are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures on a timely basis. If an actual or perceived breach of our security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures could be harmed and we could lose marketers, creators, and vendors and have difficulty obtaining merchant processors or insurance coverage essential for our operations.

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If our technology platforms contain defects, we may need to suspend their availability and our business and reputation would beharmed.

Platforms as complex as ours often contain unknown and undetected defects or performance problems. Many serious defects are frequently found during the period immediately following the introduction and initial release of new platforms or enhancements to existing platforms. Although we attempt to resolve all defects that we believe would be considered serious by our customers before making our platforms available to them, our products are not defect-free. We may not be able to detect and correct defects before releasing our product commercially. We cannot ensure that undetected defects or performance problems in our existing or future products will not be discovered in the future or that known defects, considered minor by us, will not result in serious issues for our customers. Any such defects or performance problems may be considered serious by our customers, resulting in a decrease in our revenues.

We may be subject to lawsuits for information published on our websites or by our marketers or creators, which may adversely affect our business.

Laws relating to the liability of providers of online services for the activities of their marketers or their social media creators and the content of their marketers' listings are currently unsettled. It is unclear whether we could be subject to claims for defamation, negligence, copyright or trademark infringement, or claims based on other theories relating to the information we publish on our websites, or the information published across our platforms. These types of claims have been brought, sometimes successfully, against online services and print publications in the past. We may not successfully avoid civil or criminal liability for unlawful activities carried out by our marketers or our creators. Our potential liability for unlawful activities of our marketers or our creators or the content of our marketers' listings could require us to implement measures to reduce our exposure to such liability, which may require us, among other things, to spend substantial resources or to discontinue certain service offerings. Our insurance may not adequately protect us against these types of claims and the defense of such claims may divert the attention of our management from our operations. If we are subject to such lawsuits, it may adversely affect our business.

If we fail to detect click-fraud or other invalid clicks, we could lose the confidence of our marketers and advertising partners as a result of lost revenue to marketers or misappropriation of proprietary and confidential information, thereby causing ourbusiness to suffer.

“Click-fraud” is a form of online fraud when a person or computer program imitates a legitimate user by intentionally clicking on an advertisement to generate a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the advertisement's link. We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent or illegitimate clicks on our sponsored listings. The security measures we have in place, which are designed to reduce the likelihood of click-fraud, detect click-fraud from time to time. Although the instances of click-fraud that we have detected to date have not had a material effect on our business, click-fraud could result in a marketer experiencing a reduced return on their investment in our advertising programs because the fraudulent clicks will not lead to revenue for the marketers. As a result, our marketers and advertising partners may become dissatisfied with our advertising programs, which could lead to the loss of marketers, advertising partners, and revenue. In addition, anyone who can circumvent our security measures could misappropriate proprietary and confidential information or could cause interruptions in our operations. We may be required to expend significant capital and other resources to protect against such security breaches or to address problems caused by such breaches. Concerns over the security of the Internet and other online transactions and the privacy of users may also deter people from using the Internet to conduct transactions that involve transmitting confidential information.

The influencer and content marketing industry is subject to rapid technological change and, to compete, we must continually enhance our products and services.

We must continue to enhance and improve the performance, functionality, and reliability of our products and services. The influencer and content marketing industry is characterized by rapid technological change, changes in user requirements and preferences, frequent new product and service introductions embodying new technologies, and the emergence of new industry standards and practices that could render our products and services obsolete. In the past, we have discovered that some of our customers desire additional performance and functionality not currently offered by our products. Our success will depend, in part, on our ability to develop new products and services that address the increasingly sophisticated and varied needs of our customers and respond to technological advances and emerging industry standards and practices on a cost-effective and timely basis. The development of our technology and other proprietary technology involves significant technical and business risks. We may fail to use new technologies effectively or to adapt our proprietary technology and systems to customer requirements or emerging industry standards. If we are unable to adapt to changing market conditions, customer requirements, or emerging industry standards, we may not be able to increase our revenue and expand our business.

If we lose key personnel or are unable to attract and retain additional qualified personnel, we may not be able to successfully manageour business and achieve our objectives.

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We believe our future success will depend upon our ability to retain our key management, including Edward H. Murphy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Ryan S. Schram, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Murphy, who is our founder, has unique knowledge regarding the influencer marketing space, business contacts, system design, and development expertise regarding our platforms that would be difficult to replace. Mr. Schram has sales, marketing, and business development expertise that our other officers do not possess. Even though we have employment agreements in place with each of them, if Messrs. Murphy and Schram were to become unavailable to us, our operations would be adversely affected. Although we maintain “key-man” life insurance for our benefit on the lives of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Schram, this insurance may be inadequate to compensate us for the loss of our executive officers.

Our future success and our ability to expand our operations will also depend in large part on our ability to attract and retain additional qualified engineers, sales and marketing, and senior management personnel. Competition for these types of employees is intense due to the limited number of qualified professionals and the high demand for them, particularly in the Orlando, Florida area where our headquarters are located. We have in the past experienced difficulty in recruiting qualified personnel. Failure to attract, assimilate and retain personnel, including key management, technical, sales, and marketing personnel, would have a material adverse effect on our business and potential growth.

Public company compliance may make it more difficult to attract and retain officers and directors.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and new rules subsequently implemented by the SEC have required changes in corporate governance practices of public companies. As a public company, we expect these rules and regulations to increase our compliance costs and to make certain activities more time-consuming and costly. As a public company, we also expect that these rules and regulations may make it more difficult and expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance and we may be required to accept reduced policy limits and coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain the same or similar coverage. As a result, it may be more difficult and costly for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our Board of Directors or as executive officers.

Risks Relating to our Common Stock

Our common stock may be delisted if we fail to maintain compliance with the requirements for continued listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market, and the price of our common stock and our ability to access the capital markets could be negatively impacted.

Our common stock is listed for trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market (“Nasdaq”). To maintain this listing, we must satisfy Nasdaq’s continued listing requirements, including, among other things, a minimum closing bid price requirement of $1.00 per share for continued inclusion on the Nasdaq Capital Market under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(a)(1) (the "Bid Price Rule").

Although we are currently in compliance with the Bid Price Rule, we have fallen out of compliance with such a rule in the past. If we fail to meet this or any of the other continued listing requirements in the future, our common stock may be delisted from Nasdaq, which could reduce the liquidity of our common stock materially and result in a corresponding material reduction in the price of our common stock. In addition, delisting could harm our ability to raise capital through alternative financing sources on terms acceptable to us, or at all, and may result in the potential loss of confidence by investors, employees, and business development opportunities. Such a delisting likely would impair your ability to sell or purchase our common stock when you wish to do so. Further, if we were to be delisted from Nasdaq, our common stock may no longer be recognized as a “covered security” and we would be subject to regulation in each state in which we offer our securities. Thus, delisting from Nasdaq could adversely affect our ability to raise additional financing through the public or private sale of equity securities, would significantly impact the ability of investors to trade our securities, and would negatively impact the value and liquidity of our common stock.

We have raised and may raise, additional capital to meet our business requirements in the future and such capital raising may be costly or difficult to obtain and could dilute current stockholders’ ownership interests.

We have incurred losses since inception and expect to continue to incur losses until we can significantly grow our revenues. Therefore, we may need additional financing to maintain and expand our business. This financing may be obtained through our at-the-market (ATM) equity offering program under the sales agreement, dated June 21, 2021, with National Securities Corporation acting as a sales agent, under which we may sell common stock having an aggregate offering price of up to $100,000,000. Any additional capital raised through our at-the-market equity offering program or any other financing involving the sale of equity or equity-linked securities may dilute current stockholders’ ownership percentages and could also result in a decrease in the market value of our equity securities.

The terms of any securities issued by us in future capital transactions may be more favorable to new investors and may include preferences, superior voting rights, and the issuance of warrants or other derivative securities, which may have a further dilutive effect on the holders of any of our securities then outstanding. In addition, we may incur substantial costs in pursuing future capital financing, including investment banking fees, legal fees, accounting fees, securities law compliance fees, printing

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and distribution expenses, and other costs. We may be required to bear the costs even if we are unable to complete any such capital financing. We may also be required to recognize non-cash expenses in connection with certain securities we issue, such as convertible promissory notes and warrants, which may adversely impact our financial results.

Exercises of stock options, warrants, and other securities will dilute your percentage of ownership and could cause our stock price to fall.

As of March 22, 2022, we had 62,176,505 shares of our common stock issued and outstanding, which included 90,599 shares of unvested restricted stock, outstanding stock options to purchase 1,778,932 shares of our common stock at an average exercise price of $2.78 per share, and unvested restricted stock units of 490,382 shares with an intrinsic value of $552,780.

As of March 22, 2022, we also have reserved shares to issue stock options, restricted stock, or other awards to purchase or receive up to 3,308,294 shares of common stock under our May 2011 Equity Incentive Plan, — shares of common stock under our August 2011 Equity Incentive Plan, and 387,500 shares of common stock under our 2014 Employee Stock Purchase Plan. In the future, we may grant these additional shares or issue new securities, per terms defined in employment agreements or as part of additional incentive programs. The exercise, conversion, or exchange by holders of stock options, restricted stock units, or warrants for shares of common stock, or the issuance of new shares of common stock for additional compensation will dilute the percentage ownership of our stockholders. Issuance of a substantial number of shares of our common stock could cause the price of our common stock to fall and could impair our ability to raise capital by selling additional securities.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish or cease publishing research or reports about us, our business, or our market, or if they adversely change their recommendations regarding our stock, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock is influenced by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts may publish about us, our business, our market, or our competitors. No person is under any obligation to publish research or reports on us, and any person publishing research or reports on us may discontinue doing so at any time without notice. If adequate research coverage is not maintained on our company or if any of the analysts who cover us downgrade our stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business or provide relatively more favorable recommendations about our competitors, our stock price would likely decline. If any analysts who cover us were to cease coverage of our Company or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

Our earnings are subject to substantial quarterly and annual fluctuations and to market downturns.

Our revenues and earnings may fluctuate significantly in the future. General economic or other political conditions may cause a downturn in the market for our products or services. A future downturn in the market for our products or services could adversely affect our operating results and increase the risk of substantial quarterly and annual fluctuations in our earnings. Our future operating results may be affected by many factors, including, but not limited to our ability to retain existing or secure anticipated marketers and creators; our ability to develop, introduce and market new products and services on a timely basis; changes in the mix of products developed, produced, and sold; disputes with our marketers and creators; and general economic conditions causing a reduction in spending by our customers. These factors affecting our future earnings are difficult to forecast and could harm our quarterly and/or annual operating results. The change in our earnings or general economic conditions may cause the market price of our common stock to fluctuate.

The price of our common stock in the public markets has experienced, and may in the future experience, extreme volatility due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control.

Since our common stock started trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market, it has been relatively thinly traded and at times been subject to price volatility. Recently our common stock has experienced extreme price and volume volatility. From January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021, the closing price of our common stock ranged from a low of $1.23 on December 29, 2021, to a high of $7.45 on January 25, 2021. During the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, the closing price of our common stock averaged $2.84 with an average daily trading volume of 2.4 million shares.

In addition to shares of our common stock, the stock market in general, and the stock prices of technology-based companies in particular, have experienced volatility that often has been unrelated to the operating performance of any specific public company. The market price of our common stock has historically experienced and may continue to experience significant volatility. As a result, the market price could fluctuate widely in price in response to various factors, many of which are beyond our control, including the following:

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•changes in our industry;

•competitive pricing pressures;

•our ability to obtain working capital financing;

•additions or departures of key personnel;

•limited “public float” in the hands of a small number of persons whose sales or lack of sales could result in positive or negative pricing pressure on the market prices of our common stock;

•speculative trading practices of certain market participants;

•actual or purported “short squeeze” trading activity;

•expiration of any Rule 144 holding periods or registration of unregistered securities issued by us;

•sales of our common stock;

•our ability to execute our business plan;

•operating results that fall below expectations;

•loss of any strategic relationship;

•regulatory developments; and

•economic and other external factors, including effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

These and other market and industry factors may cause the market price and demand for our common stock to fluctuate substantially, regardless of our actual operating performance, which may limit or prevent investors from readily selling their shares of common stock and may otherwise negatively affect the liquidity of our common stock.

Further, on some occasions, our stock price may be or may be purported to be, subject to “short squeeze” activity. A “short squeeze” is a technical market condition that occurs when the price of a stock increases substantially, forcing market participants who had taken a position that its price would fall (i.e. who had sold the stock “short”), to buy it, which in turn may create significant, short-term demand for the stock not for fundamental reasons, but rather due to the need for such market participants to acquire the stock to forestall the risk of even greater losses. A “short squeeze” condition in the market for a stock can lead to short-term conditions involving very high volatility and trading that may or may not track fundamental valuation models.

In addition, in the past, class action litigation has often been instituted against companies whose securities have experienced periods of volatility in market price. Securities litigation brought against us following volatility in our stock price, regardless of the merit or ultimate results of such litigation, could result in substantial costs, which would hurt our financial condition and operating results and divert management’s attention and resources from our business.

ITEM 1B - UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

None.

ITEM 2 - PROPERTIES

We do not have any current physical locations and all of our employees are working remotely. We have not experienced any major declines in operating efficiency in our remote working environment and have made the decision to continue our work from home policy indefinitely as a virtual first employer. Our corporate mailing address is 1317 Edgewater Dr #1880, Orlando, Florida.

ITEM 3 – LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

From time to time, we may become involved in various other lawsuits and legal proceedings that arise in the ordinary course of our business. Litigation is, however, subject to inherent uncertainties, and an adverse result in these or other matters may arise from time to time that may harm our business. As of March 22, 2022, we are not aware of any legal proceedings or claims that we believe would or could have, individually or in the aggregate, a material adverse effect on us. Regardless of outcomes, however, any such proceedings or claims may nonetheless impose a significant burden on management and employees and may come with costly defense costs or unfavorable preliminary interim rulings.

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ITEM 4 – MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

Not applicable.

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PART II

ITEM 5 - MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

Common Stock Information

Our shares of common stock trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol IZEA. As of March 22, 2022, we had approximately 62,176,505 shareholders of record of our common stock. This number does not include beneficial owners whose shares are held in the names of various securities brokers, dealers, and registered clearing agencies.

Dividend Policy

We have never paid dividends to holders of our common stock, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future as we intend to retain any earnings for use in our business. Any future determination to pay dividends will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend upon our results of operations, financial condition, contractual restrictions, restrictions imposed by applicable law, and other factors our board of directors deems relevant.

Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans

See the section “Equity Incentive Plans,” under Part III, Item 11 of this Annual Report.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

Except as previously reported in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC, there were no unregistered sales of equity securities by us during the year ended December 31, 2021.

ITEM 6 - SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

Not applicable for smaller reporting companies.

ITEM 7 – MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

Company Overview

IZEA Worldwide, Inc. (“IZEA”, “we”, “us” or “our”) creates and operates online marketplaces that connect marketers, including brands, agencies, and publishers, with content creators such as bloggers and tweeters (“creators”). Our technology brings the marketers and creators together, enabling their transactions to be completed at scale by managing custom content workflow, creator search and targeting, bidding, analytics, and payment processing.

We help power the creator economy, allowing everyone from college students and stay-at-home individuals to celebrities and accredited journalists the opportunity to monetize their content, creativity, and influence through our 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.

We provide value through managing custom content workflow, creator search and targeting, bidding, analytics, and payment processing. While the majority of the marketers engage us to perform these services (the “Managed Services”) on their behalf, they may also use our marketplaces to engage creators for influencer marketing campaigns or to produce custom content on a self-service basis by licensing our technology.

Our primary technology platform, The IZEA Exchange (“IZEAx”), is designed to provide a unified ecosystem that enables the creation and publication of multiple types of custom content through our creators’ websites, blogs, and social media channels, including, among others, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram. We extensively use this platform to manage influencer marketing campaigns on behalf of our marketers. This platform is also available directly to our marketers as a self-service tool and a licensed white label product. IZEAx was engineered from the ground up to replace all of our previous platforms with an integrated offering that is improved and more efficient.

In 2020, we launched two new platforms, BrandGraph and Shake. BrandGraph is a social media intelligence platform offering marketers an analysis of share-of-voice, engagement benchmarking, category spending estimates, influencer identification, and sentiment analysis.The BrandGraph platform maps and classifies the complex hierarchy of corporation-to-brand relationships by category and associates social content with brands through a proprietary content analysis engine. Shake is an online marketplace where buyers can quickly and easily hire creators of all types for influencer marketing, photography,

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design, and other digital services. The Shake platform is aimed at digital creatives seeking freelance “gig” work. Creator’s list available “Shakes” in their accounts on the platform. Marketers select and purchase creative packages from them through a streamlined chat experience, assisted by ShakeBot - a proprietary, artificial intelligence assistant.

Impact of COVID-19 on our Business

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted our operations, sales, and finances beginning in 2020. To protect the health and safety of our employees, we took precautionary action and directed all staff to work from home effective March 16, 2020. We allowed the leases for our company headquarters and temporary office spaces to expire at the end of their terms throughout 2020. We have not experienced any major declines in operating efficiency in our remote working environment and have decided to continue our work-from-home policy indefinitely as a virtual-first employer.

We will continue to actively monitor the COVID-19 situation and may take further actions altering the business operations that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders, or as required by federal, state, or local authorities. It is not clear what the potential effects any such alterations or modifications may have on our business, including the effects on our customers, employees, and prospects, or on our future financial results.

Key Components of Results of Operations

Overall consolidated results of operations are evaluated based on Revenue, Cost of Revenue, Sales and Marketing expenses, General and Administrative expenses, Depreciation and Amortization, and Other Income (Expense), net.

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 1 herein, revenue from Marketplace Spend Fees are reported on a net basis, and 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.

Cost of Revenue

Our cost of revenue consists of direct costs paid to our third-party creators who provide the custom content, influencer marketing, or amplification services for our Managed Service customers, where we report revenue on a gross basis. It also includes internal costs related to our campaign fulfillment and SaaS support departments. These costs include salaries, bonuses, commissions, stock-based compensation, employee benefit costs, and miscellaneous departmental costs related to the personnel responsible for providing support to our customers and ultimately fulfilling our obligations under our contracts with customers. Where appropriate, we capitalize costs incurred with software developed or acquired for our revenue-supporting platforms and amortize these costs over the estimated useful lives of those platforms. This amortization is separately stated under depreciation and amortization in our consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss.

Sales and Marketing

Our sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries, bonuses, commissions, stock-based compensation, employee benefit costs, travel and miscellaneous departmental costs for our marketing, sales, and sales support personnel, as well as marketing expenses such as brand marketing, public relations events, trade shows, and marketing materials, and travel expenses.

General and Administrative

Our general and administrative (“G&A”) expense consists primarily of salaries, bonuses, commissions, stock-based compensation, employee benefit costs, and miscellaneous departmental costs related to our executive, finance, legal, human resources, and other administrative personnel. It also includes travel, public company, investor relations expenses, accounting, legal professional services fees, leasehold facilities, and other corporate-related expenses. G&A expense also includes our technology and development costs consisting primarily of our payroll costs for our internal engineers and contractors responsible for developing, maintaining, and improving our technology, as well as hosting and software subscription costs. These costs are expensed as incurred, except to the extent that they are associated with internal-use software that qualifies for capitalization, which is then recorded as software development costs in the consolidated balance sheet. We also capitalize costs

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that are related to our acquired intangible assets. Depreciation and amortization related to these costs are separately stated under depreciation and amortization in our consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss. G&A expense also includes current period gains and losses on our acquisition costs payable and gains and losses from the sale of fixed assets. Impairments on fixed assets, intangible assets, and goodwill are included as part of general and administrative expense when they are not material and broken out separately in our consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss when they are material.

Depreciation and Amortization

Depreciation and amortization expense consists primarily of amortization of our internal-use software and acquired intangible assets from our business acquisitions. To a lesser extent, we also have depreciation and amortization on equipment and leasehold improvements used by our personnel. Costs are amortized or depreciated over the estimated useful lives of the associated assets.

Other Income (Expense)

Interest Expense. Interest expense is primarily related to the imputed interest on our secured credit facility, accrued interest for the PPP loan, and interest on the financing of computers.

Other Income. Other income consists primarily of interest income for interest earned on investments, or changes in the value of our foreign assets and liabilities and foreign currency exchange gains and losses on foreign currency transactions, primarily related to the Canadian Dollar. For 2021, it also includes a gain on the forgiveness of debt related to our PPP loan (see “Liquidity and Capital Resources ‒ PPP Loan” below) and a gain on the sale of digital assets.

Results of Operations for the Twelve Months Ended December 31, 2021 and 2020

The following table sets forth a summary of our consolidated statements of operations and the change between the periods:

Twelve Months Ended December 31,

Costs and expenses:

Other income (expense):

Revenue

The following table illustrates our revenue by type, the percentage of total revenue by type, and the change between the periods:

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Twelve Months Ended December 31,

Managed Services revenue during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, increased 80% from the same period in 2020, primarily due to increased orders from new and existing customers returning to and expanding their marketing efforts through sponsored social marketing as compared to the prior-year period.

SaaS Services revenue, which includes license and support fees to access the platform services, and fees earned on the marketers’ self-service use of our technology platforms to manage their content workflow and influencer marketing campaigns, declined 22% from the same period in 2020, due to:

•Marketplace Spend Fees decreased by approximately $0.3 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, when compared with the same period in 2020, primarily as a result of lower spend levels from our marketers and lower fees assessed on those spends as a result of competitive pricing efforts in IZEAx. Revenue from Marketplace Spend Fees represents our net margins received on this business.

•License Fees revenue decreased during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 to $1.5 million compared to $1.7 million in the same period of 2020. The decrease in IZEAx license fees was partially offset by an increase in subscribers for BrandGraph and IZEAx Discovery services, albeit at lower rates. Additionally, we implemented a competitive standardized pricing system for all IZEAx license fee customers. Prior to 2021, the subscription fees for BrandGraph and IZEAx Discovery were classified under Other Fees, but these amounts from 2020 have been reclassified under License Fees to conform with their 2021 classification.

•Other Fees revenue decreased (16)% for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, compared to the same period in 2020 due to a reduction in inactivity service fees.

Cost of Revenue

Cost of revenue for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, increased by $6.6 million, or approximately 83%, compared to the same period in 2020 primarily due to the increase in Managed Services revenue. Cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue increased from 44% in 2020 to 48% in 2021, due primarily to several large contracts in the current period that carry a lower average margin.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, increased by $2.8 million, or approximately 47%, compared to the same period in 2020. Advertising and marketing expenses increased $1.2 million to further promote brand awareness and improve customer acquisition, satisfaction, and retention. Payroll, personnel-related expenses, and stock compensation for sales and marketing personnel increased $1.3 million due to higher commissions and bonuses driven by increased bookings.

General and Administrative

General and administrative expense for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, increased by $2.4 million, or approximately 28%, compared to the same period in 2020. The increase in general and administrative expense was primarily due to $1.4 million in higher compensation costs associated with additional personnel and higher commission and bonus expense linked to performance. Contractor costs increased $1.1 million for additional engineers to supplement our team working to expand our technology offerings.

Impairment of Goodwill

In March 2020, we identified triggering events due to the reduction in our projected revenue due to adverse economic conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the continuation of a market capitalization below our carrying value, and uncertainty for recovery given the volatility of the capital markets surrounding COVID-19. We performed an interim

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assessment of goodwill, using the discounted cash flow method under the income approach and the guideline transaction method under the market approach, and determined that the carrying value of our Company’s reporting unit as of March 31, 2020 exceeded the fair value. As a result of the valuation, we recorded a $4.3 million impairment of goodwill resulting in an expense for the twelve months ended December 31, 2020.

Based upon our analysis of goodwill in late 2021, there has been no further impairment as of December 31, 2021.

Depreciation and Amortization

Depreciation and amortization expense for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 decreased by $0.6 million, or approximately 34%, compared to the same period in 2020.

Depreciation expense on property and equipment was $0.13 million and $0.14 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Depreciation expense decreased slightly due to the disposal of aging equipment in 2021.

Amortization expense was $1.0 million and $1.5 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Amortization expense related to intangible assets acquired in the Ebyline, ZenContent, and TapInfluence acquisitions was $0.5 million and $1.1 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively, while amortization expense related to internal-use software development costs was $0.5 million and $0.4 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Amortization on our intangible acquisition assets is decreasing due to the completion of amortization on certain intangible assets acquired in prior years while amortization on our internal software costs is increasing due to continued development and the release of BrandGraph and Shake in 2020.

Other Income (Expense)

Interest expense decreased by $0.04 million to $0.03 million during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 due primarily to the elimination of amounts owed on our acquisition costs payable and the reduction in our average borrowings on our secured credit facility during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, compared to the same period in 2020.

Other income, net increased by $2.2 million during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, when compared to the same period in 2020, primarily from the gain on the forgiveness of debt. including principal of $1.9 million and interest of $0.02 million, totaling $1.92 million on the PPP Loan and a gain of $0.19 million on the sale of digital assets.

Net Loss

Net loss for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, was $3.1 million, a $7.4 million decrease in the net loss of $10.5 million for the same period in 2020. The decrease in net loss was the result of increased net revenue and the gain on the forgiveness of debt related to the $1.9 million PPP Loan.

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Key Metric

We review the information provided by our key financial metrics, Managed Services Bookings, and gross billings, to assess the progress of our business and make decisions on where to allocate our resources. As our business evolves, we may change the key financial metrics in future periods.

Managed Services Bookings

Managed Services Bookings is a measure of all sales orders received during a time period less any cancellations received, or refunds given during the same time period. Sales order contracts vary in complexity with each customer and range from custom content delivery to integrated marketing services; our contracts generally run from several months for smaller contracts up to twelve months for larger contracts. We recognize revenue from our Managed Services contracts on a percentage of completion basis as we deliver the content or services over time, which can vary greatly. Historically, bookings have converted to revenues over a 6-month period on average. However, since late 2020, we have been receiving increasingly larger and more complex sales orders which, in turn, has lengthened the average revenue period to approximately 9-months, with the largest contracts taking longer to complete. For this reason, Managed Services Bookings, while an overall indicator of the health of our business, may not be used to predict quarterly revenues, and could be subject to future adjustment. Managed Services Bookings is useful information as it reflects the amount of orders received in one period, even though revenue from those orders may be reflected over varying amounts of time. Management uses the Managed Services Bookings metric to plan its operating staff, to identify key customer group trends to enlighten go-to-market activities, and to inform its product development efforts. Managed Services Bookings for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021 and 2020 was $39.5 million and $17.3 million, respectively.

Gross Billings by Revenue Type

Company management evaluates our operations and makes strategic decisions based, in part, on our key metric of gross billings from our two primary types of revenue, Managed Services, and SaaS Services. We define gross billings as the total dollar value of the amounts charged to our customers for the services we perform, and the amounts billed to our SaaS customers for their self-service purchase of goods and services on our platforms. The amounts billed to our SaaS customers are on a cost-plus basis. Gross billings are the amounts of our reported revenue plus the cost of payments we made to third-party creators providing the content or sponsorship services, which are netted against revenue for generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”) reporting purposes.

Managed Services gross billings include the total dollar value of the amounts billed to our customers for the services we perform. Gross billings for Managed Services are the same as Managed Services Revenue reported for those services in our consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss in accordance with GAAP.

SaaS Service gross billings include license and other fees together with the total amounts billed to our SaaS customers for their self-service purchase of goods and services on our platforms, termed ‘Marketplace Spend Fees.’ Our SaaS customers’ marketplace spend is billed on a cost-plus basis. SaaS Services Revenue includes the total of License and Other Fees gross billings, plus the Marketplace Spend Fees gross billings (which includes our third-party creator costs on those billings that are netted against revenue for GAAP reporting purposes).

We consider gross billings to be an important indicator of our potential performance as it measures the total dollar volume of transactions generated through our marketplaces. Tracking gross billings allows us to monitor the percentage of gross billings that we retain after payments to our creators. Additionally, tracking gross billings is critical as it pertains to our credit risk and cash flows. We invoice our customers based on our services performed or based on their self-service transactions plus our fee. Then we remit the agreed-upon transaction price to the creators. If we do not collect the money from our customers prior to paying our creators, we could experience large swings in our cash flows. Additionally, we incur the credit risk to collect amounts owed from our customers for all services performed by us or by the creators. Finally, gross billings allow us to evaluate our transaction totals on an equal basis to see our contribution margins by revenue stream so that we can better understand where we should be allocating our resources.

The following tables set forth our gross billings by revenue type, the percentage of total gross billings by type, and the change between the periods:

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Twelve Months Ended December 31,

Non-GAAP Financial Measure

Adjusted EBITDA

Adjusted EBITDA is a “non-GAAP financial measure” under the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). We define Adjusted EBITDA as earnings or loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, non-cash stock-based compensation, gain or loss on asset disposals or impairment, and certain other unusual or non-cash income and expense items such as gains or losses on settlement of liabilities and exchanges, and changes in the fair value of derivatives, if applicable.

We use Adjusted EBITDA as a measure of operating performance, for planning purposes, to allocate resources to enhance the financial performance of our business and in communications with our Board of Directors regarding our financial performance. We believe that Adjusted EBITDA also provides valuable information to investors as it excludes non-cash transactions, and it provides consistency to facilitate period-to-period comparisons.

You should not consider Adjusted EBITDA in isolation or as a substitute for an analysis of our results of operations as under GAAP. All companies do not calculate Adjusted EBITDA in the same manner, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure. Moreover, Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, including that Adjusted EBITDA:

•does not include stock-based compensation expense, which is a non-cash expense, but has been, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a significant recurring expense for our business and an essential part of our compensation strategy;

•does not include stock issued for payment of services, which is a non-cash expense, but has been, and is expected to be for the foreseeable future, an important means for us to compensate our directors, vendors, and other parties who provide us with services;

•does not include depreciation and intangible assets amortization expense, impairment charges and gains or losses on disposal of equipment, which is not always a current period cash expense, but the assets being depreciated and amortized may have to be replaced in the future; and

•does not include interest expense and other gains, losses, and expenses that we believe are not indicative of our ongoing core operating results, but these items may represent a reduction or increase in cash available to us.

IZEA US Equity

IZEA · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

ITEM 1 – BUSINESS

ITEM 1A – RISK FACTORS

ITEM 1B - UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

ITEM 2 - PROPERTIES

ITEM 3 – LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

ITEM 4 – MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

ITEM 5 - MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

ITEM 6 - SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

ITEM 7 – MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

IZEA US Equity☆

IZEA · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

ITEM 1 – BUSINESS

ITEM 1A – RISK FACTORS

ITEM 1B - UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

ITEM 2 - PROPERTIES

ITEM 3 – LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

ITEM 4 – MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

ITEM 5 - MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

ITEM 6 - SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

ITEM 7 – MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

IZEA US Equity