Inuvo, Inc. 10-K

ITEM 1. BUSINESS. Company Overview Inuvo is a technology company that develops and sells information technology solutions for marketing and advertising. These solutions predictively identify and message online audiences for any product or service across devices, formats, and channels including video, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, display, social, search and native. These solutions allow Inuvo’s clients to engage with their customers and prospects in a manner that drives responsiveness. Inuvo facilitates the delivery of hundreds of millions of marketing messages to consumers every single month and counts among its clients numerous world-renowned names across industries. The Inuvo solution incorporates a proprietary form of artificial intelligence, or AI, branded the IntentKey. This patented machine learning technology uses interactions with Internet content as a source of information from which to predict consumer intent. The AI can identify and advertise to the reasons why consumers are purchasing products and services not who those consumers are. In this regard, the technology is designed for a privacy conscious future and is focused on the components of the advertising value chain most responsible for return on advertising spend, the intelligence behind the advertising decision. Inuvo technology can be consumed both as a managed service and software-as-a-service. For clients, Inuvo has also developed a collection of proprietary websites collectively branded as Bonfire Publishing where content is created specifically to attract qualified consumer traffic for clients through the publication of information across a wide range of topics including health, finance, travel, careers, auto, education and lifestyle. These sites also provide the means to market test various Inuvo advertising technologies. There are many barriers to entry associated with the Inuvo business model, including a proficiency in large scale information processing, predictive software development, marketing data products, analytics, artificial intelligence, integration to the internet of things ("IOT"), and the relationships required to execute within the IOT. Inuvo’s intellectual property is protected by 17 issued and eight pending patents. Products and Services The Inuvo platforms use analytics, data and artificial intelligence in a manner that optimizes the purchase and placement of advertising in real time. These products and services include: • ValidClick: A marketing and advertising service provided directly to brands and large consolidators of advertising demand where a collection of data, analytics, software and publishing gets used to align merchant advertising messages with anonymous consumers across various websites online. The service includes Think Relevant, a wholly owned marketing agency and Bonfire publishing, a wholly owned collection of websites; and • IntentKey : An artificial intelligence-based consumer intent recognition system designed to reach highly targeted mobile and desktop In- Market audiences with precision. The platform can serve multiple creative formats including display, video, audio and native across multiple device types including desktop, mobile, tablet, connected/smart TV and game consoles. The product is sold as both a fully managed service and/or a Software as a Service ("SaaS") solution. Key Relationships The company maintains long-standing relationships with Yahoo! and Google who provide access to hundreds of thousands of advertisers from which a majority of the ValidClick revenue originates. When an advertisement is clicked, the ValidClick platform effectively sells that click to these partners who then sell it to their advertisers. We maintain multi-year service contracts with these companies. In 2021, these customers accounted for 48.6% of our total revenue as compared to 60.5% in 2020. We also have major contracts with Xandr, Inc. who, in exchange for a fee, provides access to publishers' advertising inventory for the IntentKey. In addition to our key customer relationships, we maintain important distribution relationships with owners and publishers of websites and mobile applications. We provide these partners with advertisements which they use to monetize their websites and mobile applications. We continuously monitor consumer traffic with a variety of proprietary and patent protected software tools that can determine the quality of the traffic viewing and clicking on Inuvo served advertisements as a part of our service to our biggest clients. 5 Strategy Our business strategy has been to develop data processing and advertising technologies that can displace intermediaries within the online advertising ecosystem, while cultivating relationships that can provide access to media spend (advertisers) and media inventory (websites). In this regard, we have proprietary demand (media spend) and supply (media inventory) technologies, targeting technologies, on-page or in-app ad-unit technologies, proprietary data and data management technologies, and advertising fraud detection technologies. We have both direct and indirect relationships at some of the largest media buyers and/or consolidators in the industry. For the ValidClick platform, where the focus is search and social advertising channels, the immediate strategy is to maintain relationships with existing partners and expand the business by supporting IntentKey customers. For the IntentKey platform, where the focus is programmatic advertising channels, the immediate strategy is to scale through the hiring of additional sales professionals and partnerships, growing existing accounts and expanding our market footprint. In an increasingly privacy conscious world, we are focused on replacing the current technologies used by advertisers with our artificial intelligence solution, which does not rely on the use of consumer data. Our business strategy is focused on providing differentiation through the AI analytics and data products we own and protect through patents. For the marketing and advertising industries we serve, this strategy aligns with the components of the value chain that are the principal drivers of value to our clients. As part of our growth strategy, we evaluate acquisition candidates from time to time as opportunities arise with a focus on companies that have either advertisers or advertising relationships we do not possess or publishers or publishing partners who have content we do not possess. Sales and Marketing We drive general awareness of our brands through various marketing channels including our websites, social media, blogs, public relations, trade shows and conferences. Sales and marketing for our products differs based on whether they are demand or supply facing. The demand side of our business includes sales executives who create interest from agencies, trading desks and brands directly. Leveraging our IntentKey and ValidClick technology to highlight our differentiation, our sales executives explain how we identify the most relevant audiences so we can, on behalf of our clients, target those audiences at a time when they are most prone to engage / respond / subscribe / tune-in or watch our clients' message. The supply side of our business includes relationships with and integrations to platforms that make available for auction, advertising inventory the IntentKey can use to identify advertising placements for Inuvo clients. We pay a fee to the platform for this service. Within ValidClick, a series of web properties and content have been developed within the wholly owned Bonfire publishing where unique technology and content experiences can be created in a manner that aligns with the objectives of our advertising clients. Competition We face significant competition in our industry. Competitors continue to increase their suite of offerings across marketing channels to better compete for total advertising dollars. There are many barriers to entry to Inuvo’s business that would require proficiency in large scale data center management, software development, data products, analytics, artificial intelligence, integration to the internet of things, or IOT, the relationships required to execute within the IOT and the ability to process tens of billions of transactions daily. We compete, both directly and indirectly with companies who offer demand side platforms (DSP’s), direct marketing platforms (DMP’s), Data Suppliers and Aggregators, Media Planners and various Measurement and Analytics companies. The companies within these categories are defined by LUMA @ https://lumapartners.com/content/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape. Our primary competitive advantages include: patented, proprietary technology for the categorization and storage of consumer intent (data used to discover and match online audiences to product or service); real time visibility of a marketing event (recognizing that there is currently a transaction where a match exists between our advertising clients and an interested party for their product on a website) where our technology is capable of responding to over 200,000 events per second; and patented advertising fraud prevention. Many competitors have greater name recognition and are better capitalized than we are. Our ability to remain competitive in our market segment depends upon our ability to be innovative and to efficiently provide unique solutions to our demand and supply customers. There are no assurances we will be able to remain competitive in our markets in the future. 6 Technology Platforms Our proprietary applications are constructed from established, readily available technologies. Some of the basic elements of our products are built on components from leading software and hardware providers such as Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, EMC, and Cisco, while some components are constructed from leading open-source software projects such as Apache Web Server, Apache Spark, HAProxy, MySQL, Java, Perl, and Linux. By seeking to strike the proper balance between using commercially available software and open-source software, our technology expenditures are directed toward maintaining our technology platforms while minimizing third-party technology supplier costs. We strive to build high-performance, availability and reliability into our product offerings. We safeguard against the potential for service interruptions at our third-party technology vendors by engineering controls into our critical components. We deliver our hosted solutions from facilities, geographically disbursed throughout the United States and maintain ready, on-demand services through third-party cloud providers Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services to enhance our business continuity. Our applications are monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by specialized monitoring systems that aggregate alarms to a human-staffed network operations center. If a problem occurs, appropriate engineers are notified, and corrective action is taken. Intellectual Property Rights We own intellectual property (IP) and related IP rights that relate to our products, services and assets. Our IP portfolio includes patents, trade secrets and trademarks. We actively seek to protect our IP rights and to deter unauthorized use of our IP and other assets. While our IP rights are important to our success, our business is not significantly dependent on any single patent, trademark, or other IP right. Our trademarks include the U.S. Federal Registration for our consumer facing brand ALOT® in the United States. Our intellectual property portfolio includes 17 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) and eight pending patent applications. To distinguish our products and services from our competitors’ products, we have obtained trademarks and trade names for our products. We also protect details about our processes, products, and strategies as trade secrets, keeping confidential the information that we believe provides us with a competitive advantage. Employees and Human Capital Resources As of January 31, 2022, we had 81 full-time employees, none of which are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Human capital management is critical to Inuvo’s ongoing business success, which requires investing in our people. Our aim is to create a highly engaged and motivated workforce where employees are inspired by leadership, engaged in purpose-driven, meaningful work and have opportunities for growth and development. We are an equal opportunity employer and we are fundamentally committed to creating and maintaining a work environment in which employees are treated with respect and dignity. All human resources policies, practices and actions related to hiring, promotion, compensation, benefits and termination are administered in accordance with the principles of equal employment opportunity and other legitimate criteria without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, age, mental or physical disability, genetic information, any veteran status, any military status or application for military service, or membership in any other category protected under applicable laws. An effective approach to human capital management requires that we invest in talent, development, culture and employee engagement. We aim to create an environment where our employees are encouraged to make positive contributions and fulfill their potential. We instill our core values of innovation, encouragement, motivation, and curiosity with our employees to instill culture and create this environment of growth and positivity. Our Board of Directors is also actively involved in reviewing and approving executive compensation, selections and succession plans so that we have leadership in place with the requisite skills and experience to deliver results the right way. Seasonality Our future results of operations may be subject to fluctuation because of seasonality. Historically, the second half of the year is typically stronger than the first half because of the changes in demand for marketing placements leading into the holiday season. If we are not able to appropriately adjust to seasonal or other factors, it could have a material adverse effect on our financial results. 7 History The Company was incorporated under the laws of the state of Nevada in October 1987 and originally operated within the oil and gas industry. This endeavor was not profitable, and as a result from 1993 to 1997 the Company had essentially no operations. In 1997, the business was reorganized and through 2006 a number of companies were acquired from within the advertising and internet marketing industry. In 2009, following the weakness in the economy, a new team was called in to assess the array of businesses that had been acquired in the preceding years and as a result between 2009 and 2011, that team sold and/or retired eleven businesses as a part of the restructure. In March 2012, as part of a longer-term strategy, the Company acquired Vertro, Inc., which owned and operated the ALOT product portfolio. That acquisition included the ALOT brand, as well as a long-standing relationship with Google. In 2013, with a grant funded by the State of Arkansas, the Company moved its headquarters to Arkansas where we have remained. In February 2017, the Company entered into an asset purchase agreement with NetSeer, Inc. which advanced the Company's technology strategy while also increasing the number of advertiser and publisher relationships. We exchanged 3,529,000 shares of Inuvo common stock and assumed approximately $6.8 million of specified liabilities in this business combination. More Information Our website address is www.inuvo.com. We file with, or furnish to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports, as well as various other information. This information can be found on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. In addition, we make available free of charge through the Investor Relations page of our website our annual reports, quarterly reports, and current reports, and all amendments to any of those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after providing such reports to the SEC.