• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 10, 2015

Additional investors include Advance Publications, Upfront Ventures and Foundry Group.

With the capital, Unified plans to build out its data platform and software applications, and expand into new markets, according to Sheldon Owen, co-founder and CEO of Unified.

“This latest round of funding will fuel our next stage of growth,” Owen stated.

Unified’s software and platform are designed to help marketers make better decisions about their audiences, messages, and channels based on real-time signals and its own brew of analytics.

To boost its broadcast and digital ad-targeting capabilities, iHeartMedia invested an undisclosed sum in Unified in June.

Since June, iHeartMedia has had access to analytics and targeting based on data from Unified’s Social Operating Platform. Unified also will be able to add aggregated data about iHeartMedia’s audiences to its database.

The integration of Unified’s social data was expected to make it easier for iHeartMedia advertisers to identify audience segments, measure the impact of ads, and understand attribution for digital ads.

Data from Unified’s SOP was also combined with iHeartMedia’s audience intelligence, as well as ad clients’ own propriety data, to enable more precise targeting of consumers through broadcast radio, digital, mobile and live events, on-demand entertainment and information services.

For iHeartMedia, its interest in Unified is part of a broader embrace of digital technology and marketing services.

In April, the country’s biggest radio broadcaster announced plans to launch a programmatic ad platform for its broadcast radio stations, which it promised would allow advertisers and agencies to automatically buy ads across its’ 850-plus radio stations.

Last year, iHeartMedia partnered with AdsWizz to develop new techniques for insertion of targeted audio ads in live broadcast radio streams.