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Acquisition Broadens IZEA’s Client Base with Fortune 500 Companies and Online Publishers

ORLANDO, FL (August 2, 2016) – IZEA, Inc. (NASDAQ: IZEA), operators of IZEAx, the premier online marketplace connecting brands and publishers with influential content creators, has acquired ZenContent, Inc., a content marketing technology platform, for up to $4.5 million in cash and equity, including performance-based earnouts over a three year period.

“This accretive acquisition is part of our ongoing plan to aggregate best-in-class providers in the content and influencer marketing spaces,” said Ted Murphy, Chairman and CEO of IZEA. “It broadens our customer base and will provide more ways for our Creators to work with the world’s leading brands.”

ZenContent’s technology platform is differentiated by being optimized for high-volume content production, servicing a strong base of Fortune 500 e-commerce customers, amongst others. Customers can tap into the company’s network of over 5,000 content creators for large-scale asset production. ZenContent’s proprietary tools ingest full product databases and associated meta-data, source creators and provide quality assurance for content projects, making product listings more friendly for consumers and more indexable for search.

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In addition to corporations focused on e-commerce, ZenContent also works with leading online publishers such as IAC, XO Group and CNET for the production of articles and text updates, including a real-time API that enables production of assets for rapid publishing of news stories and augmentation of consumer content. Online publishers use ZenContent’s technology to quickly respond to questions submitted by website users, as well as to expand the universe of content available to their readers.

“Different customer types have different content workflow needs,” said Murphy. “This acquisition complements the expert content we are already producing and strengthens our offering to e-commerce companies and publishers. We intend to service the entire spectrum of custom content production, from creating unique titles and metadata to high-quality editorial storytelling via video.”

Brianna DeMike, ZenContent’s co-founder and head of Business Operations and Product, has extensive experience in content creation and virtual workforce management. She will become Vice President of Content at IZEA, where she will continue to foster client relationships, develop enhanced internal processes, and contribute to IZEA’s technology innovation planning.

ZenContent’s technology will be integrated into IZEAx, augmenting the technology and workflow used to produce premium expert content from the Ebyline acquisition last year.

Global content marketing is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 15% to $54.2 billion in 2019, while the U.S. market – by far the world’s largest content market – is projected to increase at nearly 14% CAGR to more than $22.5 billion in 2019, according to PQ Media.

About ZenContent

Based in Mountain View, California, ZenContent creates high-quality content for businesses. Most content creation companies struggle with quality, but we cracked the problem through a special combination of tech and human touch. With dedicated teams, automation, and a few handy yet complex algorithms, we make the process simple and stress-free. For more information about ZenContent, visit www.zencontent.com.

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