LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 18, 2016) - Vertical Mass, the world's only data management platform (DMP) and marketplace built specifically for the music, entertainment and sports industries, today announced it has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round was supported by investors Greycroft, Formation 8, Sierra Wasatch, Canyon Creek Capital, Magnetar Capital and the San Francisco 49ers.

Out of the gate, Vertical Mass was quickly recognized for its ability to help both celebrities and brands understand and better market to their fan bases. Since then, the company expanded its enterprise data management services to dozens of major franchises and companies. The success has benefited all parties involved as Vertical Mass clients rapidly monetize their audiences in ways impossible in the past and the company itself has earned millions in sales. Vertical Mass plans to put its Series A raise to work by using it to grow their engineering and data science teams and greatly scale business development and sales efforts. It also plans to use a portion of the funds to launch a new enterprise marketing operating system (OS) specific to the needs of the customer categories the company serves.

The Vertical Mass DMP is used by the world's top talent and companies in music, sports and entertainment to aggregate their active audiences by collecting and safely storing data on fans across social media, websites, mobile apps, ecommerce stores, ticketing platforms and content streaming services. The platform helps its clients access their data, understand audiences in much greater detail, expand reach with truly efficient media and monetize these audiences as the official data sets for talent and companies.

For the first time ever, these exclusive data sets are now widely available for marketers to understand their consumers' passions at a deeper level, to tap into insights that enhance creative strategies and to drive true media buying efficiency. This new investment signifies another strong endorsement of vertical data businesses focused on building the definitive consumer profiles for marketers looking to reach those specific audiences at scale.

"Similar to how ESPN, HBO and MTV carved out TV verticals in sports, entertainment and music, we've built the same with audience data," said Mark Shedletsky, CEO of Vertical Mass. "Marketers have always invested billions to align with these passionate, premium and valuable audiences. The same principles still apply -- this shift simply represents the evolution of marketing from media to a data-first approach as it unlocks a much richer set of business uses and scale than media alone."

Dana Settle, Co-Founder & Partner at Greycroft, stated, "As the data ecosystem is rapidly shifting to premium and category-specific audiences, Vertical Mass is already an undisputed leader with hugely valuable and unique audience data sets. What the team has accomplished so far has been remarkable and we're excited about the journey ahead."

Over 300 of the world's top talent and companies choose Vertical Mass as their official data partner with a combined audience of over 3.2 billion fans. A sample of their network includes: 44 Grammy award winners, nine Super Bowl half-time acts, the world's top grossing actor, the world's top touring artist, 80 of the top 100 Facebook pages, the world's most tech-enabled sports teams and many more.

About Vertical Mass:
Vertical Mass helps you collect and safely store data on your fans across social media, websites, mobile apps, ecommerce and content streaming services. Your proprietary data helps you understand your audience better and reach those fans with advertising or content wherever they browse the web. You can automatically deliver more value to the right fans with the right products. It also helps your marketing partners spend media dollars much more effectively by targeting your audience with ads or distributing content wherever they browse the web -- delivering significant revenue to you for the value of your data.

Whether you're the world's largest streaming service, an up-and-coming Instagram superstar, the reigning NHL champs or are headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Vertical Mass is the only data management platform built specifically for you. Vertical Mass is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York and San Francisco.