Glam Media Archive

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."