Dive Brief:
- In an effort to gain technology that will help its sponsored content go viral, Tribune Media invested $25 million in Dose Media in a Series B round.
- Dose Media also publishes OMGFacts.com and achieved 17 million unique views in October, according to comScore. Before this deal, it only monetized through programmatic ads.
- Emerson Spartz, founder of Dose Media, told Ad Exchanger, “We think guaranteeing virality will solve a number of problems in how native advertising is currently bought and sold.”
Dive Insight:
The bulk of Tribune Media’s investment will be used to bolster Dose Media’s engineering team, accounting for two-thirds of its roster. Spartz said tech is key to publishing success and that “the problems that publishers face are the problems that ad tech companies face. Ad tech companies have made progress in better targeting users – now it’s the publishers’ turn.”
Tribune Media’s content, largely local broadcast news, will make use of Dose’s technology, which includes a tool called “Keppler” that uncovers potentially viral stories. It also boasts a content management system called “Dante” that helps write potentially viral stories, and “Mendel,” technology to optimize those stories.
Dose Media also has a distribution solutions tool, “Lovelace,” that chooses platforms and social media feeds to distribute potentially viral stories, and “Darwin” that uncovers the desired audience.
This fall, Opera MediaWorks and comScore teamed up for research on mobile native video ads that found those sponsored ads make people more likely to purchase and recommend products. Viewing the native mobile video ads helped increase testing metrics, including favorability by 4%.