December 14, 2006

Glam Media Gets $18.5 Million And A CNET Chairman

Andrew Meyer

50 comments »

Glam Media, a fashion and lifestyle Web site, has a trifecta of news today. It has received $18 million in Series C funding, CNET chairman Jarl Mohn is joining the company as an investor and strategic adviser, and there is a new partnership with Hearst Magazines to bring articles from their popular magazines, starting with Marie Claire, to Glam.com.

The funding was led by Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures (DAG), with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, WaldenVC, and Information Capital. The money will be used to accelerate the growth of the network on the Web and expand the sales and editorial teams.

The Hearst/Marie Claire deal is a major move on the part of the fashion magazine industry. Typically high-fashion magazines horde their editorial content for their print versions. Magazine Web sites are a hodgepodge of advertising and blurbs. Bringing real magazine content to the online network is a smart move that is a long time coming. Glam Media reaches over 7 million global unique visitors per month and is a top 10 women’s property, according to comScore Media Metrix October 2006 reports. So why has it taken so long?

“From a business perspective, print magazines are an incredible place. Whereas all other offline mediums have been declining, print magazines have not been declining,” said Samir Arora, chairman and founder of Glam Media. “They’ve been steady at about 17 percent of advertising over the last five years and most of their focus is on print, as opposed to online.”

Arora pointed out that online advertising has not been geared towards women in the same way that offline magazine traditionally is.

“In 2004, under 50 percent of ecommerce was targeted towards women and in real life, that’s not the case, it’s more like 80 percent,” he said. “But when you go online, these magazines’ Web sites have largely been places to drive subscription to the print magazine. So whenever there is a medium change, it’s rare that someone that is dominating one medium also dominates the new medium.”

That’s what Glam wants to do and the notion that women-targeted networks should be more than short workouts and bathing suit ads is the right way to go about it, which this woman thinks makes the company a good investment.

Sphere It

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Comments

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Victor

December 14th, 2006 at 7:55 am

7 million global unique visitors per month is a great achivement. With the investement of this magnitude they are such to dominate their niche.
Michelle

December 14th, 2006 at 8:21 am

Interesting. It’s almost like a portal made for women. Neat. Thanks for finding this Nat….yet another site to add to my bookmark
Julie

December 14th, 2006 at 8:30 am

Victor- While I support anything that occurs in the women and fashion space do not be mislread by the Comscore numbers. Those do not represent the numbers of Glam.com but in fact are the aggregate numbers of their entire network of blogs, most of whom do not necessarily know that Glam uses their traffic in such a manner. It is dishonest and anathema to the transparent principles of the blogosphere on which they so heavily depend.
TW

December 14th, 2006 at 8:38 am

Wait…doesn’t Marie Claire still have a deal through Hearst with the original network for women- iVillage.com? (that incidentally for years and years was about far more than bathing suits and short workouts UNTIL the deal with Hearst was struck)
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 8:43 am

I like Glam because it was built by a tech crew (like my site), though I don’t see them virally or mentioned much among the online fashion circles where I would have thought they had such high numbers.

Definitely expect more magazines to make these kind of moves - we’re seeing a lot of this as well.
Anita

December 14th, 2006 at 8:43 am

$18.5 MILLION! Geez. I need to move to the west coast.
The Budget Fashionista

December 14th, 2006 at 8:47 am

Interesting.. I wonder what this will mean for members of their blog network.
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 8:58 am

@ Julie and Budget Fashionista - hey guys!!! Great to see you here!
Ryan

December 14th, 2006 at 9:18 am

CNET. It’s CNET, not CNet.
Jon

December 14th, 2006 at 9:38 am

Certainly, Glam.com is doing a great job…but this should also be a sign for the traditional fashion magazines: commercializing user generated content makes a lot of sense.
Fashion Industry Ceo

December 14th, 2006 at 10:20 am

That gives me hope for what im trying to do with our blog on creating fashion lines from scratch!
cw

December 14th, 2006 at 10:32 am

i like it. though i’m not really interested in a lot of the cosmo-fab content, the interface is fabulous and for some reason i don’t feel overloaded with gunk. once it can handle all this traffic it seems like a great place for women of that demo for sure.
RedGlam

December 14th, 2006 at 10:45 am

@ Julie (#3), Great point about the aggregate number of visitors. Wonder what the number is just for the Glam.com portal.
Vik

December 14th, 2006 at 10:56 am

Wow, good for them. All these companies raising money, while I do doc review in my office like a law monkey
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 10:57 am

@13 (redglam) - I think that’d be interesting too. Julie, myself and a few others posting on this thread are actually from both tech and fashion (not just tech trying to get into fashion, or the other way around) - you see a lot of reference within the online fashion communities to our sites (heck, I’m listed as a person somebody’d like to meet on a MySpace page, lol) but as I had mentioned, not much on Glam. That’s why I’m kind of surprised to hear they have such giant numbers, but you never know.

I think the difference is that while Glam’s made a site and is trying to come into the Web fashion market/industry, we all came out of it with our platforms. I don’t think this is a bad investment for the VC that put money into glam, but I wish more firms would get to know the market and all the players around it.
Chris

December 14th, 2006 at 10:59 am

RedGlam,

Quantcast says 100K uniques per month for the Glam.com portal.

If they are counting every time that the Glam Network banner loads on a blog as a “visit” they are being extremely misleading.

I think that Glam is a good concept, as their model is the same as mine (intersection of media and commerce), but I don’t think the glam.com site itself is that big of a draw. However, the Glam blog network is a brilliant idea and will continue to reap rewards for them.

Anybody want to talk about how much return traffic they get from Glam as a blog owner?

-Chris
Julie

December 14th, 2006 at 11:05 am

Yes well sadly Silicon Valley does not like to go outside of its comfort zone when it comes to interacting with other industries. That will hurt VCS looking to find cheaper and easier to flip investments. You guys should come to New York once and a while!

The fashion space has been surprisingly innovative when it comes to adopting technology platforms. And of course credibility in fashion is a commodity that is more important than anything else ,which is something the fashion people who have adopted technology have. Fashion is very closed and prefers people it knows to well funded ventures. That is of course our close mindedness. I guess it cuts both ways. But in the case of Silicon Valley fashion ventures it means they wil have to work that much harder for New York City’s fashion community to care about them.

As to the numbers on Glam, well there is quite a bit of controversy there. If you check Alexa they lag well behind Style.com. Frankly I guess in the end there is no good way to really verify numbers and enterprise traffic services like Comscore want to give their consulting clients numbers they like. And if you say you have the traffic people believe ti to be true.
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 11:05 am

^ expect a lot more of that though. soon.
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 11:07 am

@ my 18 comment - i mean the mix of commerce and media. expect more of that soon.
MetroBellevue

December 14th, 2006 at 11:13 am

@16 (chris). Nice looking web site!
Chris

December 14th, 2006 at 11:15 am

Got something planned?
Jeremy Wright

December 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am

Great for Glam

As others mentioned, the 7MM does include all sites that show ads. It’s not “per display=visits” as someone else iterated, as it’s comScore tracking sites directly and then aggregating that data up to the Glam level.
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 11:35 am

@ Julie - I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, though I think it’s more about VC/investors/businesses are only just starting to notice that the online fashion niche drives a lot of internet commerce (and that there’s value in them) - not that they’re not visiting other cities, etc. I think that also VC and businesses who do look into it base the value on traditional factors used to measure broad players like myspace - niches are different. They’re going to look tiny compared to everybody else - but the thing is, they are very targeted and that’s another story. MySpace is a hodge podge of everything - our audiences are a direct hit to our market. And you’re right - it’s hard to break into the fashion community in any part of the country (NY, LA, etc.) and the girls running platforms like you or I came out of the community and the industry, there’s a real advantage to this that a lot of companies and investors may not notice right now but probably will as they try to succeed in the market and potentially find it difficult. Companies like Glam or what not seem to kind of think just tacking on an editor from a print magazine or celebrities will solve the problem, or that all the things that work traditionally will work in succeeding in a niche market. But the fact that I’ve been vested in fashion and tech forever and rarely hear about them says something about that, in my opinion. I don’t know. In my experience, you need a pretty good guide who knows the backstreets very well within a niche to break into it and be successful but only time will tell.

In terms of the commerce element, I came from very extensive background in ecommerce and fashion online retail. It’s a no brainer for fashion media platforms - everybody’s kind of known this long before Glam launched.
FunSeeker

December 14th, 2006 at 12:46 pm

Julie,
The NY fashion industry will prb become more Valley focused for their content and online publishing in the future.

The Valley does need more eastcoast blood in terms of creative and content. So move out west! Come join the party!
FunSeeker

December 14th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

Also, I forgot to mention that Glam prb gets pretty good CPMs for their ads, and that def contributed to their valuation.

Case and point: Daily Candy.
jon

December 14th, 2006 at 1:48 pm

This is really interesting. The tech-targeted online market is pretty saturated right now, and I think because of that we’re going to see more investment in more sites like this.

It’s pretty humorous that they have to put “7 million visitors a month” in their logo. Since you posted this, it’s been changed to 8 million - LOL!

Personally I think the sites like Daily Candy and Sugar Publishing Network are a lot more compelling - they do a better job at having a unique voice and attitude, which will resonate a lot better with this market.
My Daily Look

December 14th, 2006 at 1:56 pm

Comments that 7 million unique visitors may not be accurate are very interesting. . . . especially because Glam is not well known in the high fashion world nor the online fashion world.
Glam seems to be a celeb fashion lookbook where most the links to the items the celebrities are wearing are expired. Maybe they can find someone to update them now that they have $17 mill.
Michelle

December 14th, 2006 at 2:59 pm

I don’t think that you necessarily need to move to the west coast to get attention from VCs. You just need to make an innovation techy enough to be covered by the tech guys online and “cool” enough to make a buzz around the fashion community. Heck, there’s so many startups right now that is geared towards tech that would be very successful if applied to the fashion community.

In terms of technology and applying it into fashion, I agree with Patricia that its hard to get into the fashion arena if you can’t think like a woman. However, just because you’re in the fashion arena does not mean you can easily create a sustainable web 2.0 application - you have to understand technology, trends, what works and what doesn’t. You also need to have the passion to search vigourously to see what your competitors are doing. In addition, getting a bunch of women to testdrive your application and report bugs + suggestions? Good luck with that. A majority of ‘women shoppers’ don’t enjoy beta testing.

Age is also a big player — it’s hard to get the 20 something crowd to use your site if you’re not in that age group…you can’t think like them…know what’s hot and what’s not. Heck, I’m in my 20’s and if I find out that a fashion site was made by some 35 year old who is trying to be hip and cool in fashion, that site is suddenly so very unappealing. That’s another problem - finding a spokesperson if you’re not in that age group.

Find a young woman who has a balance of passion for technology AND fashion…and you’ll find someone who can come up with a hell of an idea. Or better yet, assemble a team made of women who knows fashion combined with women who knows tech. I’d rather work with a tech person who has SOME love for fashion or knows a woman’s mentality than a man any day on a fashion innovation.

If VCs want an innovative idea in fashion, they should wait a few months. I have a feeling that there will be a couple of companies on the rise that will target this very niche and lucrative market.
HonestForum

December 14th, 2006 at 3:48 pm

i would like to know more about how well “glam network” works as well. they seem to have done something like 9rules did with their blog web network.

here is an interesting comparison:
http://www.google.com/trends?q.....p;date=all

and another:
http://www.alexaholic.com/glam.....+style.com
Ashley

December 14th, 2006 at 7:33 pm

I agree completely! We women ARE being under marketed to- but I am a corprate slave but admit to having guilty pleasures (anything sweet and the dish you know)

BTW Glam feels like they are doing it right to me. Why? Take a look at all the print magazines we all read- InStyle, Vogue, Marie Claire, Domino. Their websites are LAME. Yet they have so many advertisers- last September Vogue was thicker than the BIBLE!!! So if the geeks that watch YouTube all day or whatever feel $1.6B buyout by Google for a site that does not even make their own content and has zero revenue is justified and iVillage sold to NBC for $700 million, then I think Glam will certainly do better than them.

When we plan our media spending, we look at both visitors and impressions- specially impressions in which our client’s ad’s perform. When we buy Glam- they have 3.8 million uniques and i think about 100 million high performing page views- the Glam.com part as far as i can see on comScore is 1 million and their network in 1.8 million- but when we buy inventory- glam.com page views are 60 million or so- 60-70%, and the network only 30 million. So as a media planner, glam is 60-65% of my spend with the top brand $ clients with very high CPM’s and their network is a great service for me, because i can supplement the reach with someone else managing the campaigns. Very similar to what we do with Google for Text Ads- when we buy Google- we get about 30% on Google and 60-70% on Google’s network.

When I was at AOL Steve Case said- it’s the subscription Stupid- in this case It’s the CPM’s stupid. Do the math- as a media buyer in an agency- at $20-$200 (clickz says) eCPM’s, Glam sounds like a $100’s million revenue company. I wonder why did the did such a big raise then, may be they see something like YouTube or Google did early when they raised more money than they needed- but it does sound odd. e-commerce, a big deal like Google-AOL, or buying Digg you think?
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 8:06 pm

@ michelle, i completely disagree, but i guess only time will tell.
Julie

December 14th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

Ohh Michelle that was such a sweet comment Were you talking about me?

Find a young woman who has a balance of passion for technology AND fashion…and you’ll find someone who can come up with a hell of an idea.”

I would say that is very sound advice indeed. Except that in a few months most of us won’t want the money anymore.

“If VCs want an innovative idea in fashion, they should wait a few months. I have a feeling that there will be a couple of companies on the rise that will target th
s very niche and lucrative market. “
Patricia

December 14th, 2006 at 11:22 pm

I might accidentally double post (travelling, bad wireless connectivity in the hotel). I should clarify that I disagree with the idea that age has anything to do with being able to speak to an audience - tons of editors at magazines are well into their 30s and have no trouble effectively understanding and reaching the needs of younger audiences. Anna Wintour is a lot older than I am and I definitely think she knows her stuff.

I’d love to see real innovation come into fashion and especially into shopping - right now, all I see are a lot of people doing what’s already in place, so it’ll be really great to see some new ideas that fill holes in what online fashion needs. How exciting!

As far as VC goes, investors want a stable place to put their money with people who can prove they’ve got knowledge, experience, maturity, etc to give them a return - if fashion can provide this, the VCs will come.
ABC

December 15th, 2006 at 1:53 pm

Come on - the Marie Claire deal is not a big deal. Glam and Cosmopolitan, another Hearst magazine, announced a deal 2 years ago - what happened with that? nothing much, I would guess. Marie Claire is willing to give away content to drive traffic back to their site to be monetized through advertising? All fashion mags are now distributing or trying to distribute content to sites that have traffic in exchange for links back. Glam needs content because they have found that commerce alone is tough - it does not draw traffic. nothing new creative or groundbreaking here.
CJ

December 15th, 2006 at 2:03 pm

I was going to say this felt bubbly, but then I looked at the site. it’s pretty good. I can see it getting bought up by vogue much more than Popsugar or any of the more knockoff myspacy sites out there.
Ashley

December 15th, 2006 at 2:04 pm

I was still wondering about the visitor valuation and it hit me- that it’s the space! DailyCandy, with about 1 million users did their round earlier this year at a $125 million valuation I think.

@ ABC I think the Marie Claire deal might be important because they are taking content /traffic away from iVillage/NBC- so iVillage’s loss and Glam’s gain

- -
Leon

December 18th, 2006 at 1:46 am

Glam may be a top 10 women’s site as sited by the article, but its Alexa ranking is barely top 10,000. About 100 reach per million users.

The $150M valuation gives them $1.5M valuation for 1 out of 1 million Internet users. In another word, each US woman (or man) daily visitor to the site is valued at about $10,000 (at least a few thousand dollars).

An unusually high growth rate must have been assumed to make the numbers right. (I am not predicting whether Glam can achieve that kind of growth rate or not.)

The site is glamorously designed. But its content, at least at the first look, is also highly and obviously commercialized.
michelle m

January 1st, 2007 at 12:47 pm

This is such a great conversation. I’m glad someone brought up the comscore issue. I really wonder about VC’s — that’s a lot of money and I look at the other women’s sites they’re pouring money in and…well..eh…

We’re doing really well, but I think it’s based on quality of content. We haven’t bought any advertising and I certainly don’t have the infrastructure of glam and we’ve taken no funding.

I too was at AOL for many years (ashley who are you??) overseeing women’s content and I have to say there’s a lot of crap media buys. I always say — it’s not the impressions, but who you impress (stole that from Corante).

Patricia — you and I should talk about some cross-promo.
Jen

January 17th, 2007 at 7:36 pm

LOVE seeing this!!! especially since we run a ‘locally’ based fashion review-type site. To respond to the previous comment regarding the glam.com content being ‘highly and obviously commercialized’ - that is pretty much what it’s all about, right? We ran a poll with our subscribers regarding glam.com and the results were off the charts about the love for the ‘what’s in your makeup bag?’ section -

Has the industry/fashion-online-blog-world defined quality content? Aren’t our readers, subscribers molding that definition for us to some degree?