Webware

Four years after women's media and advertising network Glam Media made its debut, the company has announced its male counterpart: Brash.

Like Glam, it's an editorial hub with both original and partner content, but more importantly, it's a "publisher network" of sites that run Brash ads.

Looking at Brash's smooth, purple-and-charcoal-gray color scheme, you can tell this isn't the same sort of male demographic targeted by the fratty Heavy ad network. Like Glam, Brash aims for upscale audiences--that way, it can charge higher click-through rates. One of the advertisers on the mockup of Brash.com, not surprisingly, is the impending James Bond flick Quantum of Solace.

Content on Brash is provided through partnerships with outlets such as Rolling Stone, Time, TheCarConnection, and CNET (which publishes CNET News), and there's also some original content, like a "Brash 100" ranking of notable men ranging from Michael Phelps to Richard Branson.

At launch, participants in the ad network come from an array of entertainment, "lifestyle," automotive, and gadget sites: ArtistDirect, SpiralFrog, Monsters and Critics, and StreetFire.net, to name a few.

Glam Media has hired a former Fox Interactive Media executive, John Trimble, to handle Brash's advertising, and magazine industry veteran Richard Perez-Feria to oversee the editorial content.

Given the economic climate, Brash already lives up to its name--launching an ad network right now is a bold move, given the fact that ad networks tend to be laying people off at the moment. Even Glam is rumored to have let go of a handful of employees in the past few months.

At the same time, Glam already has an economy-be-damned track record. The company launched an initiative for luxury brand advertising as Wall Street tanked, and last week, it hired a new chief financial officer with initial public offering experience.

We'll probably see before too long whether this strategy proves to be gutsy or foolish.

Could an initial public offering be on the way for the highly ambitious Glam Media? The Valley-based advertising and media company has hired a new chief financial officer, Stephen E. Recht, who was the CFO of photo-printing site Shutterfly when it went public in 2006.

Recht replaces Ernie Cicogna, a co-founder of Glam. Cicogna will remain with the company as executive vice president of Glam Partners and general manager of the Glam Publisher Network.

"(Glam) has perfected a unique media business model and established itself as the leader in vertical content networks online," Recht said in a release. "I'm looking forward to the opportunity to contribute to the company's continued upward trajectory."

That could mean a few things: on one hand, an initial public offering, but on the other hand, Glam could have recruited him simply because it needs to make more money. With an advertising recession looming and talk of dot-com doom spreading all over the Web, Glam could just be getting down to business. For obvious reasons, a financial crisis isn't the greatest time to go public; Glam is also rumored to have gone through a round of layoffs earlier this fall.

That said, Glam (and its colorful CEO, Samir Arora) is known for its audacity. The company first made its name as an ad network on fashion and celebrity gossip sites, before branching out into everything from eco-living to African-American lifestyle to the luxury market. It's raised an astonishing amount of venture capital, has stocked its executive ranks with veterans of both print publishing and Silicon Valley, and was at the center of a rumored billion-dollar buyout offer.

Depending on whom you talked to, that buyout offer was either a fake rumor started internally to drum up Glam's market value or a savvy pre-IPO move. And that's the bipolar perception of Glam in both the tech and advertising sectors: some think it's the future of the industry, whereas skeptics see it as a big, drawn-out case of pride before a fall.

But now it looks as if there's one ex-Shutterfly executive who's betting on the former.

Glam Media, that digital-ad company that keeps expanding beyond its original base of celebrity gossip and fashion, has launched a new section: Glam Luxury, targeting high-end brand enthusiasts and the ad dollars that love them.

At launch, the headlining advertiser is (you guessed it), Swarovski, the jewel manufacturer that spawned a zillion awful iPhone cases.

So far, there are 35 participating sites geared toward affluent audiences that have agreed to be part of Glam Luxury and run its ads in exchange for some perks, like syndication in a Glam e-newsletter and access to a revenue-sharing video platform. Among the third-party sites are BlackBook.com, Travels in Taste, and Luxique, as well as existing Glam participants such as Apartment Therapy and Refinery 29.

It might seem a little bit silly, even tasteless, to be launching a luxury brand ad network in the face of a serious economic crisis, but Glam's stance is that Glam Luxury should actually help. Pinpointing audiences still willing to splurge on jewelry, handbags, and vacations, the company said, will be financially efficient and ultimately help profits.

"Glam Luxury is more relevant for luxury marketers than ever before," Joe Lagani, Glam's vice president of brand sales, said in a release. "The words, images, and thoughts that surround a luxury brand must reflect the current times, with a speed and adaptability the high-end marketer requires. Glam Media provides marketers with the right audience, environment, and reach, and enough flexibility to change with marketplace dynamics."

But perhaps in a sign of economic belt tightening, Glam hasn't hired a new "editor" for Glam Luxury, as it has with new content areas launched in the recent past. Instead, Glam Living's editorial director, Erika Lenkert, will oversee Glam Luxury as well.

Glam Media has continued its international expansion, appointing former DoubleClick and Excite executive Yukihiro Yamamura as CEO of its Glam Japan division. Glam Japan hasn't actually launched yet, but is slated to go live later this year.

Yamamura had been head of DoubleClick Japan previously, and before that he had been CEO of Excite Japan since 1999.

"The appointment of Yukihiro Yamamura is a strategic addition to the Glam team as we continue to leverage the fragmentation of the Web globally," Glam CEO Samir Arora said in a release Monday. "With an accomplished background in online advertising and operations from DoubleClick and Excite Japan, Yamamura brings local expertise that will be invaluable as Glam Media expands its position as the leading vertical content network."

Flush with venture cash, Glam has been growing like crazy--hiring former Google sales executive Michael Adair as vice president of corporate development and finance, acquiring overseas properties to help fuel international growth, and launching new divisions.

One thing's for sure: Glam Media isn't letting that $85 million funding round sit around and ferment.

The latest of many announcements from the don't-call-it-an-ad-network media firm is that it has launched a "Wellness" division, opening up its ad services to sites in the health, fitness, and "green" niches.

With hippie food brand SoyJoy as a sponsor, Glam's Wellness channel has already ushered in about 20 sites that deal with "mind-body-spirit, empowerment, and a healthy planet," according to a release Monday. Among them are BeThree, Conscious Living TV, Ecofabulous, Low Impact Living, and Spaparazzi; two others, Natural Solutions magazine and Earth Pledge, will also contribute content to the Glam.com hub that the company runs.

Glam has been on a roll recently, with high-profile hires, acquisitions both domestic and international, and new advertising strategies that have left some thinking that it's the future of the ad industry and others wondering if it's just a big pink package of Valley hype.

But launching a health-and-living vertical, besides being the trendy thing to do, is part of Glam's planned expansion beyond strictly targeting women, something CEO Samir Arora alluded to in a talk at the EconAds conference earlier this summer.

Crunchy, Prius-driving yoga types are a fairly different demographic than the one most of Glam's current sections target: fans of celebrity news, fashion, beauty, and the like.

Next stop: Glam for dudes?

Glam Media has always insisted that it's not just an ad network, and an announcement the women's-focused media firm made Monday underscored that.

Glam has launched "Glam Today," a daily newsletter featuring a selection of content from the more than 500 sites in its network of independently run blogs that serve the company's ads.

"Glam Today surfaces and highlights some of the best content created daily by the professional publishers across the Glam network," Ryan Roslansky, Glam Media's vice president of products, said in a release Monday. "Glam Media's focus on packaging display advertising with relevant content extends is core to everything we do and extends to our premium e-mail products like Glam Today designed for publishers."

It's a five-day-a-week affair: Monday's newsletter will focus on fashion and shopping, Tuesday's on beauty, Wednesday's on "living," Thursday's on entertainment, and Friday's on health.

It's a bit surprising that Glam hasn't launched something like this before: for the parent company, it's another outlet for ads, and for sites in the Glam network, it's more exposure, as well as, perhaps, the cozy feeling that they're part of something more than a plain old ad network.

There are plenty of e-mail newsletters focusing on the women's market, though. DailyCandy has been around for years and is extremely popular, though it should be said that its newsletters focus primarily on women in select U.S. cities, and Sugar has a newsletter called (wait for it...) DailySugar.

Other popular online newsletters have primarily female readerships, like Vital Juice Daily and Ideal Bite (just acquired by Disney).

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.

Glam Media has always been adamant that it's not just another ad network, something it reiterated when it announced a revenue-sharing video platform for its member sites this week.

But apparently, some big company really thinks that Glam's something special. Amid the gossipy deal making of the D6 Conference, someone at tech money blog VentureBeat heard that Glam had just received a $1.3 billion acquisition offer that it plans to turn down.

The reason it plans to shug off the offer, according to VentureBeat, is that Glam's investors--which include Accel Partners and Hubert Burda Media--"see a bigger opportunity for Glam to build a large business for high-end display advertising." That might mean an initial public offering.

So who is the spurned suitor, if VentureBeat's report is correct? I don't think it would be Google or Yahoo--or Microsoft, for that matter. My money's on a big "old media" company, or possibly a massive ad industry player looking to expand its digital footprint.

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Women's-focused media and advertising company Glam Media has acquired StyleMob, a small social-media site consisting of a blog and some community features pertaining to fashion. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The rumor was first reported in Valleywag earlier on Thursday, where blogger Nicholas Carlson added that StyleMob's founders "weren't happy" about the acquisition. Glam Media recently raised significant venture funding and hinted that it would go in part toward purchasing smaller companies.

StyleMob, centered on "street fashion" rather than the runways of Paris and Milan, had already been a part of Glam's advertising network prior to the acquisition. As it turns out, the deal was actually closed earlier this year. "Glam Media did acquire StyleMob, a fashion social media site founded in early 2007. All three employees are now with Glam," Glam Media public relations director Caroline Hacker said in a statement. "Co-founder Adam Souzis was previously announced as executive director of Glam Labs, the technology research arm of Glam (on) February 4th."

Recent months have seen a number of acquisitions in the fashion-media start-up space, including some by women's blog network Sugar Inc. Glam, meanwhile, has stayed relatively mum on purchases, choosing instead to expand its advertising reach.