• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 13, 2015

While it remains a tricky business, helping brands measure and monitor their social media impact has never been in higher demand.

To stay in the hunt, social quantifier NetBase just raised another $24 million led by new investor Spring Lake Equity Partners. NetBase plans to use to capital to scale its social listening and analytics business, and forge new partnerships, according to Peter Caswell, NetBase CEO.

Also involved were existing investors like Thomvest Ventures, Altos Ventures and WestSummit Capital.

NetBase, which was founded in 2004 as a semantic search specialist, boasts clients including American Airlines, Arby’s, Coca-Cola, Kenneth Cole, T-Mobile, Taco Bell, Walmart, and YUM! Brands.

Late last year, Universal Music Group Nashville enlisted NetBase and its Live Pulse to monitor the real-time social performance of dozens of its top country singers, including Luke Bryan, Eric Church, and George Strait.

Launched last year, NetBase’s Live Pulse dashboard lets clients track posts, tweets and shared images across all the major social channels, breaking down the content by location, including state-by-state, regionally or globally, and surfacing the most engaging current conversations in real time.

Among other things, the service allows social teams and executives to locate social hotspots and be alerted to any unusual spikes in social activity.

Social advertising is big business. “Digital ad growth will be driven mostly by social media (31% growth) … in 2015,” Strategy Analytics’ Michael Goodman, wrote in a recent report.