Glam Media to Monetise ad network in U.K.

When Glam Media raised $84.6 million in February, international expansion was on its radar, and now we're seeing the results: the women's-focused ad network announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Monetise, a London-based digital-ad sales start-up.

(Yes, that's British spelling.)

All Monetise employees will become part of Glam under the deal, financial terms of which were not disclosed.

"The acquisition of Monetise speeds our entry into the important U.K. display ad market," Glam Chairman and CEO Samir Arora said in a release. "Monetise has strong relationships with London advertising agencies and enables Glam to immediately increase its reach in the U.K. market." Additionally, some of Monetise's in-house technology will be worked into Glam's platform.

The 3-year-old Monetise, which specializes in entertainment advertising, serves display ads on sites such as Flixster, ArtistDirect and the U.K.'s TV Guide. Those sites will become part of Glam's U.K. Entertainment division; Monetise co-founder and CEO Joel Cymberg has been appointed Glam's publisher management and operations director, and co-founder and sales director Jon Walsh is now Glam's entertainment sales director.

In recent months, Glam has acquired fashion social network StyleMob, launched a revenue-sharing video platform, and become the subject of a quintessentially Silicon Valley hot-air debate over whether it had really gotten a billion-dollar acquisition offer.

[Social Cash]

With regard to the stampede toward advertising across the large social networks such as Facebook and MySpace I decided to post some thoughts. They were inspired by two panels that I spoke on in the past few weeks. Feel free to share them.

http://www.social-cache.com/2008/06/on-social-media-blogs-and-advertising