UNIFIED raises $14M to grow social engagement

Publishing giant, Advance Publications, invests in social media management platform UNIFIED

UNIFIED, an enterprise marketing technology company, annouced this morning that it raised a $14 million Series A round. Silicon Valley Bank signed onto the round by means of a $4 million debt facility and the additional financing was led by Advance Publications.

Advance Publications, owner of Condé Nast Publications, has a history of investing in technology companies and this new venture seems to stem from Advance's desire to better create and deploy advertising on social media channels.  

This capital injection will be used to invest in technology innovation on the UNIFIED Social Operating Platform product suite, talent acquisition, and sales and marketing expansion.  Advance Publications manages such publications as Wired, The New Yorker, and Vogue as well as American City Business Journals. All of these publications, and more, are seeking to gain better advertising dollars and want more effective results on social media channels.

The company, based in New York and San Francisco, allows brands and agencies to manage paid media campaigns across a wide variety of social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others. Unified pulls these companies away from the spreadsheets and automates the social site process to show real-time results. 

I caught up with Dave Donohue, UNIFIED's vice president of corporate communiications, to see just how hot this enterprise service is right now."Social media management is area that a lot of big companies are trying to buy their way into," Donohue explained. "You have Oracle acquiring Vitrue and Salesforce snapping up Buddy Media but very few are focused on the paid media like UNIFIED is specializing in."

UNIFIED customers currently include the likes of Microsoft, BMW, Home Depot, Clorox and GE.  In its first year, UNIFIED was able to manage tens of millions of dollars in ad spend.

Unified alreayd has 26 employees and has raised $15.6 million in funding to date. As part of the latest raise, Advance Publications senior vice president of corporate development, Andrew Siegel, will join Unified’s board of directors.