OREANDA-NEWS. Dose Media LLC today announced that it has closed on $25 million of Series B financing, led by Tribune Media Company and joined by Tayori LLC, an investment vehicle of Ronin Capital Chief Executive Officer John Stafford III.  Dose also announced it has changed its name from Spartz Media.  Dose will use the funds raised to enter into new content verticals, launch a video studio, add employees and grow its audience dramatically.

In the past year, Dose, the company behind Dose.com and OMGFacts.com, saw growth of more than 400% in its platform audience – increasing monthly unique visitors to its websites from 12 million to 50 million. The company expects its audience to surpass 100 million monthly unique visitors in the next year.  Dose’s unique predictive technology detects “stories worth sharing,” enabling the company’s content team to publish the stories with the highest virality potential to the right audiences, including Dose’s more than 25 million social media followers.

“We’re building the most technologically-advanced digital media company in the world,” said Emerson Spartz, Chief Executive Officer of Dose Media. “Our technology is space age compared to most media companies, but Stone Age compared to what it will be.”

As part of its investment in Dose, Tribune Media gains access to proprietary technology adding to its existing capabilities around story discovery and content publishing. As the company continues to expand its reach online with record traffic across its 42 local digital properties, Tribune Media looks to leverage Dose’s data science to optimize existing national entertainment and sports destinations. The parties have also entered into an advertising agreement which will enhance cross-platform sales and bring advertisers closer to the most desirable audiences.

"There's no one in the industry today who knows how to engineer virality better than the Dose team,” said Josh Cogswell, Tribune Media’s Chief Product Officer.  “Now working hand-in-hand with our award-winning journalists and storytellers, Emerson and his technologists are primed to reshape the way media is created and optimized for the next demanding audience and sophisticated marketer."

Building on explosive 800% revenue growth over the past year, Dose is also beginning to innovate with native advertising experiences for brands.

“Native advertising in its current form is broken. Brand advertisers pay for impressions but have to cross their fingers to achieve results. We aim to change that,” said Spartz.

This partnership aims to provide the advertising industry with an innovative, performance-based product that delivers virality for advertisers and agencies, bolstered by the broad reach of television.  

Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisor to Dose in the transaction.