Glam Media, Inc.
Type	Privately held
Industry	Internet, Media, Fashion
Founded	2003
Founder(s)	Samir Arora, Ernie Cicogna, Fernando Ruarte, Susan Kare, Vic Zauderer, Dianna Mullins, Raj Narayan, Rebecca Arora, Emmanuel Job
Headquarters	2000 Sierra Point Parkway Brisbane, California, U.S.
Key people	Samir Arora, CEO, Founder and Chairman of the Board Fernando Ruarte, EVP, Co-Founder, and CTO, Platform and Products Jack Rotolo, President, Global Sales and Business Operations Ernie Cicogna, EVP & Co-Founder, Global Creators, Partner and Ad Operations Jeanne Seeley, EVP & CFO Erin Matts, SVP and Chief Digital Marketing Officer
Products	Glam.com, media network
Employees	469 (2012)
Website	Glam Media

Glam Media, Inc. is a privately held vertical media company with more than 4,000 lifestyle websites and blogs. Glam was founded in 2004 in Silicon Valley with the vision to create engaging experiences for consumers by packaging brand advertising with professional digital content. As stated, the company's mission is to enable professional digital content that is both as engaging for consumers and as important to brand advertisers as traditional media like print magazines and television. Glam Media currently operates across seven lifestyle verticals: Women’s Style, Home, Family Entertainment, Men’s Style, Heath & Wellness, Food and Parenting. Glam Media is best known for Glam.com, a website targeted at women. The company also operates the male counterpart Brash.com, and vertical social networks Bliss.com, Foodie.com, and tend.com.

In October 2012 Glam Media reached #7 in the Top 100 Web properties as measured by comScore with 110 million visitors in the United States and 296 million unique visitors worldwide. Glam holds the #1 position in the Lifestyle and Style categories in most of their major markets worldwide and is a Top 10 Adweek Display Ad Publisher.

In March 2010, Glam Media was ranked #1 Most Innovative Media Company by Fast Company (and #37 overall) in the magazine's annual Most Innovative Companies issue.
It is controversial amongst industry observers whether Glam should be seen as a Web destination (as it is listed in comScore) or as an ad network.

History
Glam Media was founded in 2003 by former NetObjects CEO Samir Arora together with a group of Silicon Valley veterans in order to develop a website focusing on fashion and to bring brand advertisers to the Web. It was also founded with the specific aim of attracting female customers for advertisers by recreating the look and feel of printed fashion magazines.

The company evolved with an approach similar to the network-TV model. Glam expanded into new verticals and now owns and operates Glam.com, Brash.com, Bliss.com, Foodie.com, and tend.com and provides a showcase and ad platform for more than 4,000 publishers worldwide. In a FOLIO story, Samir Arora further pointed out the role of Glam in the publishing process: “Our editors are both editors and curators. We start by making sure a site is targeted to women, then we look at editorial quality, then how we can package brand advertising with this publisher in a way that will make the ads desirable."

In 2007, Glam overtook other women-oriented fashion sites like iVillage or AOL Living in terms of unique visitors.

In November 2007, Glam Media teamed up with cable network Lifetime Television to develop co-branded and shared content. As a result of the cooperation, Lifetime has relaunched their website myLifetime.com. Glam Media "will initially leverage their aggregated blogs and articles to power a “Beauty & Style” channel on the Lifetime website; conversely, Lifetime will lend broadband video, interactive media, and future original content to enhance Glam’s offerings". Glam announced the partnership as a "new vertical media network" which the company sees itself pioneering giving media companies "networks with all the glory and none of the headaches of building their own."

In January 2008, Glam introduced a "primetime placement technology" based on its existing display ad platform to ensure desired placements on the Glam website for brand advertisers. Yahoo engineer Kiumarse Zamanian was hired to lead the Glam Evolution as Vice President.

In May, 2008, the "GlamTV Platform" was introduced to enable targeted video distribution across its network. Cooperation partners include Sony BMG and MTV. There will be a "three-way revenue split between Glam, the content providers, and the blog publishers who run these clips."

By the end of 2008, Glam launched an application platform as an effort to distribute animated and interactive content to its publishers and later in 2009 to all web publishers. Technically, the so-called GlamAPPS are based on Google Gadget and OpenSocial APIs.

Using this technology platform and starting with a beta version in March 2009, Glam Media offered a new service for Twitter users, called Tinker. "The service tracks specific topics on both Twitter and Facebook, and allows these 'event' streams to be republished as standalone widgets on blogs and other sites across the Web. Within Glam's network of publishers and blogs, ads can be linked to the embedded streams of the events, offering micro-payment opportunities.

In September 2009, Glam Media goes for mobile platform. Although it took long for Glam to be on mobile front. Glam Media also hires talent from Yahoo, Google and Conde Cast which includes Chris Murphy from Yahoo working for 5 years in advertisement, Lindsey Frankenfield a former ad exec at Technorati, Manuel Ponce De Leon an lead for the rich media product team in Google.

In September 2011, Glam acquired Ning for an undisclosed amount.

Financials
Initial financing was provided by Samir Arora's Information Capital LLC and $10 million in series B financing led by Accel, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), and Walden VC. In December 2005, the Glam Publisher Network was launched, and in December 2006 a funding of $18.5 million in series C financing was closed. In summer 2007, Glam reported a multi-year ad deal with Google and was reported to be raising more funds with a campaign under the guidance of the Bank of America and Allen & Company. In fact, series D financial funding summed up to $84.6 million.

"Once convertibles are factored in, the post-money valuation of the company is a robust $500 million. Just 17 months ago, the company was valued at mere $150 million", wrote Venture Beat's Matt Marshall.

In April 2009, a fifth financing round was announced, raising $10 million from Japanese investors like Mizuho Venture Capital and Hubert Burda Media, Germany, to support expansion in these countries.

As a privately held company, Glam Media does not publish financial reports. Nonetheless a company presentation published for investors in August 2007 speaks of an expected revenue around $20 million in 2007 and reaching EBITDA positive in late 2007. Other sources indicated a projection of $25 million for 2007. Numbers that leaked in June 2007, were only showing a revenue of $1.34 million in the first quarter of 2007 and projecting a total of $11 million in 2007.

Numbers published in the Wall Street Journal in June 2008 were not authorized by the company. Later that year amidst the macroeconomic crisis, Glam reported record revenues in the 4th quarter of 2008 and spoke of "$40 million to $50 million in revenue in 2008". However, the variable share of wages was enlarged, affecting both management and staff. There were also reports of Glam cutting 7% of its workforce, and delays in payments to publishing partners because "Glam anticipates a significant slow down in collection payments from advertisers".

Glam Media began 2010 by announcing the raising of approximately $50 million in private equity mezzanine funding at a $750 million valuation. The Series E round was led by Aeris CAPITAL with existing Glam Media Series D Investors Burda Digital Holding and Mizuho Capital participating. Glam also announced that North America Region business reached EBITDA profitability and the Global business was EBITDA break-even in Q4, 2009. This round brought the net total cash raised by the company directly to approximately $130 million.

International expansion
Glam Media started acquisitions in Europe and Asia in the year 2008.

In June 2008, Glam acquired London-based digital-marketing company Monetise Ltd, whose 17 employees would form Glam's UK-team. Referencing ComScore, UK newspaper The Guardian reported in its online edition on June 18, 2008, that Glam had "already 10 million unique users in the UK each month".

Also in February 2008, Glam and Hubert Burda Media, one of the biggest German media companies, announced a cooperation which opened the American market for Burda. Burda was also one of the investors in series D financial.,[47] making Burda a "one-digit-percentage" shareholder in Glam Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung located Burda'a investment in the double-digit-million area.[49] Burda's executive Christiane zu Salm joined the Glam board as an observer.

In July 2008, Glam and Burda Cross Media, an subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media, presented their new German joint venture Glam Media GmbH with Glam's vice Ralf Hirt as managing director. Beginning with a staff of 10 employees, Munich-based Codex Media GmbH was acquired and its founder Katja Dalhöfer engaged as sales manager in Germany. According to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, by the end of 2008 Glam Germany had reached number 1 of women-targeted sites in German language. By November 2009, Glam reached 8.7 million visitors in Germany and, after Facebook, was the second-fastest growing website in this country from January to November 2009.

In March 2009 Burda announced that it has increased its investment in Glam Germany to reach a 49% share, by this also extending its investment in Glam Media, USA.

A Japanese dependency was launched in August 2008.

In January 2009, Glam Glam bought AdaptiveAds, based in San Francisco and Mumbai, India, a startup specialised in display ad targeting and optimization.

In April 2009, Glam One (http://www.glam.fr) filed a lawsuit before the Paris Civil Court against Glam Media, due to Glam Media's infringement on GlamOne's prior rights on the word "Glam" in France for advertising services notably. GlamOne applied for an order to withdraw Glam Media's French website and remedies. In addition, Glam One has also initiated opposition with the OHMI (Office des marques communautaires) to protect its anterior brand and will continue to block any attempt de register infringing trademarks.

In March 2011, Glam Media expand its international presence with the launch of Glam Media South Korea, the sixth international country subsidiary for Glam, adding to platforms in Canada, Germany, Japan, France and the UK.

Identity
 

Glam.com on October 26, 2007

Business observers dispute whether Glam Media can be counted in the same category as some of the competition since Glam is an "amalgam of blogs and publishers that simply link in to the Glam network, which sells ads for its collection of sites." Referencing the slowness in growth of big content sites and portals such as AOL, New York Times blogger Saul Hansell called Glam a "fashion oriented vertical blog ad network". BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis sees Glam as both a content and an ad network and adds "in the end Glam is really a platform".

The crucial issue of the discussion is whether traffic of the ad partners of Glam should be counted to Glam's traffic. CEO Samir Arora describes Glam Media as an example of a distributed media company, as opposed to a web portal or ad network. Along with its own programming, a distributed online media site curates or brings together content from other sites in its network. A mere ad network would rely on distributing online advertisements in various ways without focusing on distributing its own or third-party content as well. Glam’s ad serving and technology platform called "Glam Evolution" was established to let sites easily upload their stories into Glam.

CNNMoney.com quoted Analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence taking a more practical approach to the controversy: “Glam has the reach. So I don’t see the issue of whether they are a destination or a network as being worthy of that much debate.”