Glam roars, sparking battle of the hot women sites

June 28, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

women.jpgGlam Media, the network of women’s online lifestyle, fashion and other blogs, has surged past iVillage in overall global unique visitors, according to Comscore’s latest data just released.

Glam has scrounged up 30 million unique visitors in a single year — an accomplishment that only MySpace, Google and maybe one or two others have done before it (see table below).

We already mentioned Glam passed iVillage on a national basis in May. The global data shows Glam still surging ahead.

The fast growth of women’s sites has sent industry players into a furious bout of acquisition, merger and partnership talks. Yesterday, iVillage, and its parent, NBC Universal Digital Media, announced it had signed a deal with another media network, Sugar Publishing, a San Francisco company backed by Sequoia Capital. They will share content, and NBC will sell ads for Sugar’s content, exclusively.

We’re hearing more, potentially very large acquisition deals are under way.

Brian Sugar, founder of Sugar Media, said his company had 4.5 million unique visitors this month, and that he wants that number to jump to 25 million in coming months. Those numbers sound a tad high, however, since Comscore reported Sugar had only 1.1 million uniques last month (though that number was for U.S.). The deal included an investment by NBC, amount undisclosed, to help Sugar hire editorial staff to produce more content. It is still not profitable.

We’ve been talking with both Glam and iVillage lately about the true status of Glam, its ad and content network and the extent to which its relationship with independently owned sites is strong enough to justify them being included in Glam’s traffic numbers. iVillage suggests Glam is more of an ad network than a content site, and that its ad rates are not as high as Glam claims. However, we’ve done some researching, and we’re not certain this last assertion about ad rates is true. Moreover, leaked statistics last week purporting to show weak revenue at Glam were partial and somewhat misleading, we’ve come to understand after several talks with Glam and others. Jury is still out, but we think we’ll get more clarity at the end of next month…stay tuned.

Finally, ShopStyle, a Los Altos, Calif. start-up focused on social shopping for women, has emerged as the latest company in this area. It lets women browse brands and favorite items, and create style books. The company tracks these styles books, and thereby gets early insight into fashion trends. It then broadcasts these fashion alerts to its front page. This lets its users dictate fashion trends, rather than letting the industry dictate the, the company says. It also offers information about where to get special prices on the trendy items. However, this site is not advertising based, and so is quite different from the companies above. It has angel backing, but names and amount are undisclosed.

women-numbers.jpg

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  • Advertiser
    Matt, one thing that should be pointed out is that Glam is a network comprised of many sites that are merely affiliated for advertising leverage. Many of the sites in the network have existed long before Glam and 'join' the network in hopes of better advertising rates. Traffic to Glam's main site is actually very low. It's not fair to compare Glam's growth to MySpace or iVillage. MySpace is one property. Glam is made up of hundreds of sites that have been recruited.
  • Ted
    Yes, I have agree with Advertiser above. I can't help but thing web sites covering Silicon Valley are getting spun by GLAM which is very savvy about how to get press. Their huge traffic numbers are approved by placing advertorial on thousands of blog sites which are of questionable quality. Furthermore, the advertorial, while clearly GLAM branded is not necessarily engaging or even being read by the user of that page.

    By this metric, you could claim that Blogads.com was the world's biggest publisher of content for men. It's not true, because network traffic shouldn't be compared to actual site traffic.
  • There's a brand new entrant I'd like put into the mix!

    You StyleMe - http://www.youstyleme.com

    Started by entrepreneurs from Yahoo! and Gap, You StyleMe is an online community about style. Whether you're into couture, street wear, DIY fashion, or whatever suits your taste, You StyleMe helps you express and discover your own personal style.
  • Rockwell
    Yeah, it's really ridiculous to compare Glam and iVillage. Glam is an advertising network.
  • Matt, assuming the sales numbers that Nick Denton published were true, and adjusting for the fact that they were only East Coast sales, you can calculate what their actual CPM was.

    Simply take the revnue and then divide by their (page views/1000).

    Where page views are what comScore says. This will give you a really high CPM given there are multiple ads on each page and comScore is always conservative to actual. I am still guessing you'll get a pretty low number (
  • AE Calderon
    Ted,
    As a happy member of the Glam Network I think you need to look at what Glam is doing well rather than saying that "GLAM is very savvy about how to get press". As I have said in previous posts "it has been my personal experience and feeling that Glam’s success translates into the success of its network members. Glam provides top notch service, support and care for its members; they are always open and flexible to discuss your needs and provide a win-win solution for your site or blog". Many of us network with each other, help each other and support Glam because we get the support from them. We are in it for the Ad money but stay for the whole experience. We could easily go somewhere else to another network but we choose to stay with Glam. Regarding your comment about "questionable sites" you apparently do not know the Glam network very well. Next time get your information straight before you make an ignorant statement like that.
  • Niki,

    I've got reason to believe you can't make those assumptions. Jury is out. I'll be back with a post in late July/early August to update.
  • Maggy Young
    How about put it all into simple terms - Glam is the nearest web equivalent to posh glossy womens' mags. & so increasingly acquires their popularity as the audience becomes more net orientated. Ivillage is more of a middle market 'womens' weekly'. Glam represents a lifestyle statement & aspirations, as Vogue, & hence is the more popular site. Forget loads of ads, other sites & limited Glam content, who cares? What Glam is really seling is lifestyle.