What do you do when you’re sitting on a nearly endless torrent of finely-focused content and a few million bucks in venture capital? You go mobile.
That’s exactly what Glam Media, the distributed media network behind the womens lifestyle site Glam.com and its male-oriented counterpart Brash.com, is about to do. As one of the fastest growing sites on the web, its taken a bit longer for them to take on the mobile front than we would have guessed – but their quest to conquer portables begins tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, Glam will be announcing GlamMobile, a mobile ad publishing and content platform. The new operation is finding its roots in Japan first, with plans to roll out in Europe and the U.S. shortly thereafter.
From what we’re hearing, GlamMobile will make heavy use of GlamAdapt, their re-branded version of the AdaptiveAds service they purchased in January of this year. GlamAdapt detects the user’s carrier, the device’s resolution and multimedia capabilities, then custom-tailors an ad optimized for that phone and user. Initial ad partners at launch all fall right in line with what one would expect for a fashion-focused network, ranging from Maybelline to Diesel.
The first fruits of their labor, http://m.glam.jp, will go live tomorrow morning.
What sort of content do they have on the site? Or are they similar to an ad network?
They are getting more innovative in technology building a brand mobile ad server is pretty leading edge. Clearly leveraging their strength in women ads on web by building out a mobile strategy. Very clever.
@A.B. (Normal)
Glam is a very large network of us bloggers and publishers. Lots of copy cats out there now that want to be the “Glam of a New xyz” Glam doesn’t do much of their own content — they do use us for their sites. HuffPo, YardBarker, SBNation, TravelAds use the same ideas of a blog network with content. Lots of nahsayers out there, but Glam has been a good partner for us. Very different than an ad network — they give us great advertisers and make a lot more money than AOL Ad.com or Google. Keep creating cool stuff for us to use, like video, top blogger programs, widgets and now this. Looking forward to seeing how I can use the new mobile to get more revenue $$$’s.
I have heard, on good authority, that the majority of glam’s traffic is manufactured through linkfarming.
Weren’t they in the news last year for making their publishers wait 180 days for payment instead of the 60 day period that was in effect before? That move created a lot of bad blood.
I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for an advertisement today…
@Johnny,
OMG not again! What good authority said that? As a blogger this is the offensive stuff that is all just made up. As a part of the glam network, there is absolutely no linkfarming — that went away in 1999 when LinkShare was sold. Glam is a network of us indie professional bloggers and web publishers. True, they changed payments from 60 to 120 not 180 last year and yes, it hurt. But they consistently pay 100% on time, and we make way more than any other network — so no bad blood. They could have been like other sports and video networks that promised 60 days, and never paid us at all because they are gone today! Any ideas that make us more ad $$$’s like their new mobile offering is a great for us.
I guess they need to get their act straight and act more professionaly. That payment thing really puts off potential partners
@khan,
They actually consistently pay within 5-15 days after they are paid by the agencies. The Insider for publishers shows every advertisers and when the campaign runs, so we know how much we are making daily. As soon as Glam gets paid, we get paid. Glam is transparent and professional with us consistently. Potential partners can ask any site in the network.
Hey TechCrunch, nice post.
They are very professional partner and provide top fashion & beauty ads that are high cost CPM.
Good article and very informative.
Glam media is good site i hpe they can an affordable partner for the newbie
Glam’s business model is simple but effective. However, in the wake of display ads’ decline, growing revenues with its growing global pageviews would not be simple and requires some kind of performance-based model.
Therefore recent efforts by Glam to expand its empire further into real-time ad platform (Tinker) and now mobile (GlamMobile) is a smart way to keep its business model relevant.
In Vietnam we adopt the Glam business model into a local venture, namely PhunuNet.com, and the results were exponetial far beyond our expectation, with a flock of leading female marquee brands now signing to become the advertisers, including Sunsilk, La Vie (Nestle), Dove, Maybelline, Bayer… and the likes. It was great to clone successful models from USA and localize it in Vietnam as one of many shortcuts to make money here!
Yes, Glam’s business model is simple but clever and they have managed to keep their publishers happy while building massive scale.
Now they have scale, they are attracting the top brands display advertisers.
This is a virtuous cycle just like Google did in search, the more advertisers they get, the more publishers they attract, the larger they become.
By launching other services like mobile, they are leveraging their clever business model with technology and becoming a platform.
growing?
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=glam.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
They have over 1,000 web sites — the trend you linked is just one of them. Quantcast shows Top 10-15 with 108 million global this week, and comscore shows them as top 50 properties as #12 with 54 million unique visitors exclusive across their sites. Here is that link:
http://www.comscore.com/layout/set/popup/content/download/3013/38357/file/comScore%20Media%20Metrix%20Ranks%20Top%2050%20U.S.%20Web%20Properties%20for%20July%202009.pdf
Also interesting is the other post on TechCrunch that says users do not click on ads on mobile, these brand ads may be more engaging then text links, they certainly look better.
(via Twitter) Lots of nahsayers out there, but Glam has been a good partner for us. Very different than any other ad network — they give us great advertisers and make a lots of money.
It’s what do you do when you’re sitting on a nearly endless torrent of finely-focused content and advertisers.
This is exciting news!. I am one of glam’s bloggers and cannot wait until this is available in the US. This is why I stick with Glam: always innovative and coming up with ways to give us extra revenue. good job Glam
@Johnny: Whoever your good authority is got theinformation wrong. The payment terms were changed to 120 days BUT our payments were split so that we would not go one month without a payment. Glam did this so that we would not be so negatively affected with the changes.
I hardly ever comment on these posts but after reading all the misinformation I had to speak up. Ask around and talk to us and we can give you the information from the pov of a publisher. We love Glam and we are sticking with it. Cannot wait for mobile to be available in the us so I can have another revenue source
Excellent news for us Glam bloggers. To all the critics here I ask: where else can we get the quality of ads that Glam gives us at the revenue level they provide?. If you have a better network let me know because so far I have tried a few and after 3 years with Glam I am quite happy. Yes they have issues that I personally bring up to them often but overall it is a good network. I would take Glam over Google any time. I am hoping they make mobile available to us publishers soon
Keep bashing — we’ll keep laughing all the way to the bank.
PS… I WANT MY GLAM MOBILE NOW!!
Good news for publishers using Glam.
However, 120 days is a nonsense. Having someone owe you 4 month’s ad revenue is never good. Intersting to note only Glam USA pays 120 days, in Europe it is much faster.
On linkfarming, they do have a network of really shitty sites with names like long-hair-celebrities-with-blond-hair and the like. They should ditch them as they lower the quality of the ad network.
I like Glam but I wish they would just come out as an ad network nice and simple. WIthout all this we are the biggest women’s portal etc.
Joe,
Just bacause we are women- doesn’t mean we are stupid. Most of us have tried other partners and Glam shines out as the best. Why?
They communicate. Most networks pay net 30 after they receive, Glam pays us within a few days of when they recieve payments. More importantly, my revenue through Glam is up 50% while other networks are down 20%
Glam is not just an ad network. Why?
When someone buys yahoo or ivillage they get home pages, custom ads, content integration and more. Ad networks just fill ads with cheap ads. Glam gives us the same campaigns as the portals. Their technology makes the distinction between a yahoo home page and 100 publisher home pages disapear. That is the genius of Glam.
Calling Glam’s sites shitty is insulting. They have many publishers- very few are hairstyle sites where everyone who knows Google knows it needs haircut-names for SEO. Why don’t you list the great fashion and beauty Indie Publishers here?
Glam gives us smaller publishers the recognition that we are influential, keeps innovating, brings us big brands and makes us money.
This debate about Glam being a network or not doesn’t really matter. Glam has built a powerful media company — instead of hiring editors or buying content like portals did, they have a network of content partners. Advertisers need scale and like the simplicity of one large leader. Glam provides this to them. The bigger they get, the bigger they get. Who cares if Google has no content, they own search ads. Glam is top for women, and most of these questions don’t change that. They will get bigger and bigger and will own 50% of their market like Google does search.
This is brilliant and they are entering mobile at the right time – when branded advertisers are beginning to put time and $$ behind these efforts.
Consumers were in blogs and they found them for marketers…
Consumers are in mobile and, guess what, they’ll do the same for their 1000’s of advertiser and agency friends…
with 5+ years behind them, Glam is only getting more momentum behind them … this time international first!
Glam has certainly become a company to watch. Along with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eHarmony, it will be an interesting group to watch as the class of 2011 IPO’s. The public markets are in need of large $1B+ IPO’s and there is a frenzy for these companies shares.
See NYT article on funds trying to buy Facebook, LinkedIn, Glam & Twitter here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/business/17FACEBOOK.html
This is why Silicon Valley companies upstart large established big-corporations. Glam first went after the established Condé Nast, Elle and Hearst and became larger than them. Then it went after iVillage (who was bought by NBC) and claimed it was larger than them in reach. iVillage under NBC is failing miserably, making it easier for Glam to be number 1 for women. Big media is in big trouble as startups like Glam have more users, more ad revenue, and a cheaper business model. Technology like Glam mobile validate that media is still a technology and innovation driven business on the web, not content or the name brand of the big media company.
of the 20+ comments here… most are from the Glam folks, pretending to have real conversation