Tribune Media Makes Investment in Dose

Tribune Media Co. led a $24 million Series B financing for Dose Media, formerly known as Spartz Media.

Dose, which runs the websites Dose.com and OMGFacts.com, plans to use the newly raised fund to enter new content verticals, launch a video studio, add employees and grow its audience.

For Tribune, the tie with Dose should help its stations grow their web traffic, said CEO Peter Liguori.

Speaking at the UBS Media Conference Wednesday, Liguori said Dose was a minor investment that provides “a lot of technological upside.”

He said its predictive technology will help Tribune stations get better at providing local audiences with the local news that they want.

Dose Media says monthly unique visitors to its websites has grown from 12 million to 50 million. The company expects its audience to surpass 100 million monthly unique visitors in the next year.

Dose says its 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, CEO of Dose Media. “Our technology is space age compared to most media companies, but Stone Age compared to what it will be.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.