Glam Media

Women's vertical network Glam Media is announcing the launch of a new channel in the network, Glam Wellness. The initial launch partners include: BeThree.com, Conscious Living TV, EcoFabulous, EatingWell, Lifescript, Low Impact Living and Spaparazzi.

Glam claims this new wellness channel will launch with 3 million monthly uniques and the total Glam network has over 640 content publishers and comScore reports 77 million global monthly uniques.

While this might not sound like big news, when you combine it with the launch last week of Glam's developer platform Atako, the more blogs and content sites in the Glam network, the more distribution the developers will have access to. It will be interesting to see if Glam can "woo" developers to move off the sexy iPhone platform development and on theirs. The truth is that there could be nice returns building on the Glam network.

Social browser Flock has announced the launch of a new, customized version of their browser today. The new version is named Gloss and brings together Flock's browser technology with fashion and entertainment content from over 35 sources. Glam Media, who yesterday announced the launch of their platform, is one of the launch partners. Other content providers include: Glamour, The Budget Fashionista, TMZ, Cosmo, DesignerApparel, PopSugar and others.

Within the Flock Gloss browser, there are news feeds and pre-set favorites along with a pink design (see below). My guess is that we will see a variety of these customized versions from Flock this year as they try to gain market share in the browser market.

Check out all of our Flock coverage including the launch of their Eco-Green and German versions.

Glam Media is announcing the launch of a platform today. Codenamed Atako, the goal is to offer a set of widgets and applications that can be monetized and also offer additional options for Glam network publishers. The new platform is codenamed Atako which Glam describes as, "signify the deep passion that application developers and users feel when they are working with technology that creates change."

The platform is open and Glam will allow developers to build applications for their network of content publishers. Seeing as the women's demographic is one of the "richest" online in terms of online advertising effectiveness, this could be a huge win for developers overall. The Glam Media Atako platform follows platforms by most of the major social networking providers including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Glam goes after Facebook by noting that their platform isn't a walled garden -- that is, the applications and widgets on Atako are open.

Developers and publishers will share in the revenue generated by their widgets and applications.

The Atako platform is currently in private beta for both developers and publishers. Glam Media reports 77 million monthly uniques across their network of sites and blogs. Check out all of our Glam Media coverage.

Glam Media has announced the acquisition of UK-based Monetise today. Monetise is an online media sales company founded three years ago. Monetise currently represents companies including: Flixster.com, TVGuide.co.uk, and ARTISTdirect.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The WSJ has more details on the acquisition which include a note that the company expects to bring in $25 million to $45 million of U.K.-based ad revenue next year. Overall, Glam expects $100 million in revenue in 2008, growing to $250 million to $350 million next year.

Back in February, Glam Media launched Glam International to focus on markets outside the U.S. Today's acquisition fits nicely with their plan.

Glam Media, women's content network, announced this morning their plans to go worldwide into several countries including: United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan. This announcement comes just hours after the announcement of their $84.6 million on half-a-billion valuation; VentureBeat has the details.

Shiny Media, a U.K. women's network of sites is joining Glam as well today. Glam already has a presence in the U.K. which the company reports is larger than iVillage and CondeNet.

Will Glam use its new white-label social networking tool for part of this expansion? And check out Glam's new primetime online ad network -- I am looking forward to seeing the results of this new concept in online advertising.

Shakeel Mugal is also joining Glam Media as Commercial Director to lead Glam U.K. advertising sales and operations. Bernard Desarnauts, formerly VP Marketing and Products, is assuming the new role of General Manager, Glam International to lead Glam's global expansion.

Women's online network Glam Media is making two announcements today: they are now the category leader for the Women category and they have made a hire of a former Yahoo.

According to comScore Media Metrix, Glam became the market leader in June of 2007, overtaking iVillage/NBC for the highest in reach in women. lam Media grew 213% from 7.9 million uniques a month to 25 million uniques a month in reach in the U.S., followed by iVillage/NBC, which grew at 27% from 13.5 million to 17.2 million. Where's NY-based CafeMom on the list below?

    1  [P] Glam Media                                   7,994     25,028
    2  [P] iVillage.com: The Womens Network            13,545     17,234
    3  [C] AOL Living                                  10,741     14,316
    4  [P] Everyday Health                              2,690     12,073
    5  [P] CondeNast Publications - CondeNet Network    7,098      9,708
    6  [P] Womensforum.com Sites                        6,050      5,874
    7  [M] BHG.COM                                      4,858      4,898
    8  [P] Sheknows                                     3,917      4,793
    9  [P] BabyCenter Network                           4,051      4,054
    10 [P] Family Network                               7,358      3,087

In other Glam news, Glam has hired Yahoo! Veteran Dr. Kiumarse Zamanian as Vice President of Glam Evolution Advertising Platform. Glam noted regarding the hire, "In this newly created position at Glam, Zamanian-a co-holder of three U.S. Yahoo! patents- will oversee the next stages of development of Glam Evolution, the Web's first display ad platform for premium inventory-primetime placement and audience targeting on the Internet."

Glam Media has announced the launch today of Glam Evolution. Glam describes Glam Evolution as, "the Web’s first primetime inventory placement and vertical targeting brand advertising technology platform."

From reading the release it looks like the sites Glam represents will see new ad types, more intrusive ads and adding larger ad sizes. Glam says that Glam Evolution works on a five-point system:

1. placement
2. contextual
3. engagement mode
4. brand proximity
5. editorial quality

Glam is also introducing Influentials Targeting—helping create campaigns to reach and leverage key influencers by channel and category.

Do advertisers want to purchase online advertising with the same buying patterns as traditional TV media purchases? I am on the fence but if done properly, it could help increase online spend by lining up better with offline spend for easier signoff as part of a comprehensive program. On the flip-side, the Internet is always on and targeting one timeframe may not provide the intended results.

Glam Media continues to expand; today announcing the launch of its "Managed Vertical Network Platform" (MVN) which looks like a beefed-up white-label social networking platform one-stop blog network tool. No information on pricing is available.

Glam Media explains their Platform as, "The Glam MVN platform offers media companies the necessary infrastructure and tool set to create a successful vertical network. With the Glam MVN, media companies can easily recruit publishers, manage inventory, set pricing, serve and optimize campaigns, support multiple billing systems, and offer both publisher and advertisers a wide range of reports and technical support."

Other white-label social networking platforms include Ning, KickApps and Magnify.net. It looks like Glam takes it a step further by allowing anyone to setup a blog network.

In related news, Lifetime Television & Lifetime Movie Network are announcing their use of the MVN to power the new MyLifetime and a variety of other new channels.

Distribution is so important and this new platform (I hate that word) should do very well in their verticals.

NY-based Glam Media, the women's publisher network has hired Scott Swanson as the GM and VP of the Glam Media Publisher Network. Glam has added some key executives in October including Joe Lagani, Vice President & General Manager of GlamLiving and John Trimble, EVP of Sales.

"Scott's background at Tribal Fusion, Flycast and other top internet networks makes him the ideal hire as we continue to build the most powerful media network of life and style sites on the Web," said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO, Glam Media. "Scott will speed the growth of Glam's Distributed Media platform for publishers--enabling advertisers to reach highly-targeted audiences and vertical channels."