updated
We finally “get” Glam, the network of Web sites for women’s fashion and lifestyle.
Last month, VentureBeat was incredulous when venture capitalists invested in the company at a value of $150 million. Glam is just another new media company, dependent on ads. How could an upstart team of 40 employees produce that sort of value?
The company has just demonstrated why. It is the fast growing of the country’s top 500 web sites, according to Comscore Media Metrix numbers just published — and shared with VentureBeat by chief executive Samir Arora (pictured here) during an interview Monday.
Glam enters 2007 with impressive momentum: Hip social networking company, Facebook, was No. 1 fastest-growing site in 2006 — until December — when Glam doubled its uniques in a single month and blew past Facebook at the last minute. Glam now has more than 8 million U.S. unique visitors per month. Glam overtakes Disney’s women network and CondeNast’s network, jumping to second largest women’s web property, behind only iVillage. (See data below.) Glam has more than 16 million global visitors, Arora says.
Not bad for a company conceived started four years ago in Arora’s Haight-Ashbury Victorian in SF.
There’s a slight caveat. For its traffic, Glam counts visitors to more than 200 partner and affiliate sites, which Glam doesn’t own, but delivers advertising too. On the one hand, these sites could choose to leave Glam if they get large enough. However, they are less likely to do so than VentureBeat originally suspected. Glam has solid relationships with these sites, having spent three years piecing them together. Glam typically contracts with them for two to five years, and Glam requires an exclusive on all prime advertising, in return guaranteeing a minimum payment to the partners. Glam is thus very much in control of the advertising, and so likely to be making a good cut — though it doesn’t disclose exactly how much. He likens the structure to a TV network, where NBC sells advertising for its affiliates, but gets content from them.
Even if the cut with partners isn’t particularly high, Glam would make up for it through its very high banner ad rate for advertisers, which is $12 to $20 per thousand views of a site (CPM). The rates on Glam’s fully-owned sites are $20-$35 for every 1,000 page views — a huge premium over most Web sites get. The reason, says Arora, is because advertisers want to reach women, who have been underserved by Web sites until recently. For email, advertorials and other features, the rate is $50 to $120, he says.
Women are finally catching up online, and the market is rewarding the players embracing them. The Knot was among the top ten Internet stock growers last year (126 percent increase).
Also, Arora points to comparable companies to justify his company’s relatively high value. Leader iVillage traded in 2005 in the $600-700 million market value range, before being acquired by NBC for over $600 Million plus earn outs. Over the course of 2006, as Internet companies became more valuable, iVillage’s value became an estimated $800 million. Other comparables suggest Glam is fairly valued relative to Daily Candy and IGN, a men’s site comparable to Glam, and which was acquired by Fox for $600 million.
Going forward, Arora says Glam plans to use its base in Silicon Valley (it also has an office in New York) to maintain its tech advantage over its competitors — pushing more video and TV content this year. Arora is a great salesman. Closing our hour-long interview, he says the company is headed to 20 million uniques globally. With the market valuing these sorts of companies (iVillage, IGN, etc) at 25 to 32 times unique users, he says Glam’s value is headed to $500 million! And we left believing him.
20 Comments
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Mike Rundle said:
Matt, I’m not sure if I’m buying into this extrapolated traffic blitz that Glam is purporting. At 9rules we currently have about 350 members and if we were to add together all the traffic they generate I have no doubt that we’d be equal to or surpassing Glam’s “total network” traffic, but we don’t publicize those figures because they’re misleading. The Glam.com website does its best to lock users there and not actually move them over to its network sites, thus doing all their partners a great disservice, which could potentially upset their affiliate sites enough to skip to greener pastures.
The key to keeping sites happy isn’t to lock them down in a contract, but to earn their trust over time. I don’t see Glam making an effort to push traffic outwards to their affiliates from Glam.com, which signals to me that they’re more concerned with their own advertising cut than what their affiliates are making.
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Matt Marshall said:
Mike, I went in skeptical, and asked those questions.
Is Glam a hollow shell? I.E, is the proportion of Glam’s own content/articles declining, relative to the overall network — a sign Glam is dangerously leveraging a network it doesn’t own? No. Samir said the proportion was actually growing. Glam’s own sites publish 75,000 articles a month, or about 50 to 60 percent of the network’s content, he said. And yes, Glam is pushing more of his content to the network — so integration is happening.
The point of the piece was not to hype Glam, but to explain why a $150 million valuation is plausible. Initially, I would have laughed Samir out of the room. Soon enough, it will be “show me” time again, as the company moves to build revenue.
Even Samir concedes more media entrepreneurs may try to enter this niche — though he argues Glam’s West Coast tech roots, its network model, its resulting overview of the branding women want, and its early lead in new media, all give it a leg up.
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Lesley from Fashiontribes said:
As the blogger behind Fashiontribes Daily, a fashion blog in Glam’s Network, I think it’s important that it’s crystal clear that the majority (up to 80%) of Glam’s eight million in traffic comes from “the Network” - ie. us, the blogs. And while the high CPMs are one reason many of us have continued to remain a part of Glam’s Network, the fact is, we’re bloggers - so it’s also the people we deal with at Glam that are also directly responsible.
In this case Glam’s Network Relationship Manager, Julieta Alvarado - who recruits new blogs & helps keep member blogs happy - is a key reason many of us stay with the Network. I just wanted to make sure that (well deserved) credit lands where it’s due.
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Christina said:
Ha ha Leslie - I was just getting ready to write the same thing. Long live Julieta!! I have been very happy with my experience with Glam and have not found anything misleading at all. And along with good revenue I also find myself with a decent amount of traffic from Glam as well, so count me in as a happy network affiliate! Here’s to overtaking iVillage in 2007!
PS - I am sure Julieta needs a raise. ;)
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Alex said:
Mike,
Your comment “The key to keeping sites happy isn’t to lock them down in a contract, but to earn their trust over time. I don’t see Glam making an effort to push traffic outwards to their affiliates from Glam.com, which signals to me that they’re more concerned with their own advertising cut than what their affiliates are making.” is not correct. My girlfriend has a blog that belongs to Glam and they have never “locked” her in a contract, have been very flexible with her and have provided help that other ad networks did not provide. A company is made out of its people and from what I have seen and heard Glam has that. My girlfriend has not seen a huge jump in traffic but her blog has shown up in their homepage a few times and this makes her happy. It is all about keeping the client happy. I am not involved in all the details of her site but she always raves about Glam and the people she deals with so they must be doing something right. -
Arasto said:
I am a blogger with the Glam Network. My blog is Faded Youth celebrity blog (check it out @ http://fadedyouth.blogspot.com)
Anyway, Glam has been really amazing to work with. Juliette is truly a gem. She has been instrumental to my websites success.
Thanks Glam and thanks Julietta!
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Stuart said:
London-based http://www.hecklerspray.com accounts for a fat chunk of Glam’s traffic - we pull in more than half a million users per month. What kind of valuation does that give us? ; )
Great coverage Matt - VB is a daily read. Keep it up.
PS - comparing 9rules with Glam is like comparing apples with oranges.
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Jen, Domestik Goddess said:
I’m inclined to agree with Stuart’s apples-and-oranges comment, but defining the essential difference is rather tricky. Perhaps it’s a more “feminine” definition of “network”?
Mike Rundle says, quite rightly, that “The key to keeping sites happy isn’t to lock them down in a contract, but to earn their trust over time.” He’s right, I couldn’t agree more; and that is exactly what Glam has done.
It’s a cooperative relationship, mutally beneficial, and I assure you that I for one am in no rush to take my blog to ‘greener pastures’!
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Former IGN Affiliate said:
This sounds like the process IGN went through years ago.
Step 1)
Get a whole bunch of affiliate sites. Tie them into exclusive ad contracts. Use the affiliate sites as a source of traffic to promote the core site. Occasionally push some traffic to the affiliate sites to keep them happy.Benefit to affiliate sites: more ad revenue than they can probably generate themselves. Occasionally get bits of traffic from the core site.
Benefit to Glam / IGN: free promotion from a whole bunch of affiliate sites.
Claim aggregate traffic from all affiliate sites as being their own, so they can say “wow look how big we’ve grown in such a short amount of time”.
Step 2)
Use resources to consistently produce better content than the affiliate sites, thus retaining more traffic. Make sure all high paying CPM ads go to the core company owned sites. Keep paying affiliate sites enough to keep them happy and to prevent them going to another network.Step 3)
Once you’ve built up enough traffic, start letting affiliate sites go. Or in IGN’s case, if the ad market dips and you find yourself locked into unfavorable contracts, simply stop honoring the 3-5 year contracts by ceasing to make payments to the affiliates. By this stage the affiliates have quit their full time jobs to focus on their sites, believing they have a secure contract and are getting paid to do what they love. For this reason I suggest affiliates always have a Plan B.Step 4)
Affiliate sites close down or go bust. Network traffic isn’t really impacted by much, because by now most people go to Glam.com / IGN.com as that’s the url they’re used to seeing plastered all over the affiliate sites. IGN / Glam site keep all high paying ad inventory on their now much bigger core sites.Step 5)
Sell out or do an IPO. Founders become rich. Affiliates that helped them get there, get nothing.Having been through the whole IGN experience myself I can see this happening again. Mind you, if I owned Glam, I would probably do exactly what they’re doing now. You can see why :)
While affiliate sites might say they are getting ‘good traffic’ from Glam, it’s probably nowhere near as much as the traffic they are sending back to Glam, or at least is equal to the value of the brand recognition Glam gets from sticking the Glam logo all over affiliate sites. Also, yes things are all nice and rosy now, while CPMs are high and affiliates are getting good support because the company can afford to pay for an affiliate manager to talk to the affiliates. But what happens when CPMs dip, the affiliate manager loses her job as the company tries to cut costs, sites stop getting paid? I’m not saying this is going to happen, but what if it did?
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John Smate said:
I see the rise of ad networks for a couple years out.
They are the long tail and truly the home to real consumers and buyers.I would expect a flurry of ad verts to start. They will be bought out in the 30-50mm range.
any thoughts?
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anonymous said:
A source inside from Glam is that Glam doesn’t have Exclusive Contract with its blogers. These bloggers also belong to many other blog networks.
Many blogs on Glam Network site is like this one
http://allieiswired.blogspot.com/2007/06/george-clooneys-secret-fling.htmlThis blog also belongs to BlogBurst Member Networks, as well as Hollywood Blogads Networks…..
What Glam’s promotion and advertising are doing is CLAIMING that the traffic that it SHARED with other Blog-Networks such as BlogBurst and Hollywood Blogads, and many other blog networks, are truly GLAM’s own traffic.
It is murky and perhaps in violation federal and state laws against Fraud and False Advertising.
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منتديات said:
I agree women network & site it’s from the biggest visitor
for exampl in my country saudi arabia
the biggest forum is women forum and call hawaworld u can search about it and u will find it biggest forum
looool they say women talke more thatn any one on earth -
موقع said:
It’s true I doubt that very important
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eslamali said:
thanks very much for usefull information
http://www.wgames.ch -
بلوتوث said:
thanks for usefull information
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مسجات said:
good thanks
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افلام said:
I agree that woman are fastest growing on the web :thumbup:
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hassamri said:
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