Glam Media has scored a major senior hire, landing Josh Jacobs, Yahoo’s Vice President & GM Advertising Technology Platforms who currently runs Yahoo’s entire display ad platform and previously ran the portal’s publisher network. Jacobs will be joining Glam as Senior Vice President of Brand Advertising Products & Marketing, where he’ll run all of Glam’s brand advertising products, as well as marketing and communications. This is a major win for Glam, which has shown strong growth through the economic downturn as it eats away marketshare from the likes of Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.
In 2009, Glam’s growth rate was up 50% in display revenue, during a time when many of its competitors were seeing negative growth (Yahoo, which is the leader in display ads, is down 15% and iVillage/NBC is down 20%). CEO Samir Arora attribues Glam’s success in part to its very high engagement rates, with visitors spending much more time at Glam properties than they do at sites on iVillage or Conde Nast (see the table below).
The company hasn’t come through the downturn unscathed — they had some layoffs and performance cuts — but Arora says that some of their alternative measures like reducing executive pay helped prevent heavier losses. Now things are looking up: Glam turned profitable in September, and Arora says that the company will be profitable for all of Q4.
If Glam was up 50%, and Yahoo was down 15% – maybe they should have stuck with the guy/gal responsible for kicking their new-hire’s butt.
Just a thought.
Srsly.
Though yahoo was down 15%, they are still #1 in display and much larger than Glam today. Hiring the top display exec from Yahoo is a very big deal for Glam as it moves up against the portals.
Nowdays Yahoo is not only losing market they are also losing their skilled employees
I think Yahoo is making a huge mistake letting talent go like they are doing. I guess another way to look at it is Yahoo wasn’t doing well anyways so might as well start over since you can’t do any worse than before.
What are they going to do, pay him more in money they don’t have? He wants to leave, that’s it.
It is shocking to see the time spent on Condé Nast, iVillage, Hearst and Elle sites is so low. They have all spent billions trying to create an online strategy NBCU alone has spent over $1B in acquisitions of women’s properties. Looks like Glam gets twice the women, but ten times the time spent of iVillage. Do advertisers and agencies know this?
Also a shock is Sugar, which has received a lot of attention and a recent NYT article. At 15 MM spent on all Sugar sites, the Sequoia investment must be a write down.
Samir?
@MarketWatcher @Jason,
The chart is very useful. As an agency buyer, yes we know this and see it in Nielsen, Comscore and other ratings reports with reach and page views. Seeing time spent is a very good metric to share as brands want insights on engagement metrics. Glam is a must buy in its category because of the scale of its reach and engagement delivered. Thanks for posting it.
Jim and MarketWatcher write like the same person and are clearly from Glam.
Or from their blog network that always talk about Glam
Wow. I had no idea that the numbers were so bad for print media. Content is CLEARLY not king. So Social Networks like Facebook and Content Network sites like Glam is where users are spending time on the web.
More house cleaning by Bartz. Get rid Jerry’s team, put in people who are loyal to her.
This is unrelated, but a close friend of mine was hired by Glam a while back and was diagnosed with Leukemia during her first week of work. As I understand it, Glam stepped-up to the plate and made sure she was taken care of right up until she passed away.
Companies that take care of employees — even before they have a chance to make a meaningful contribution — deserve praise.
I would get out of there as well. What is going on with Yahoo? Looking at their 2008 annual report, they don’t make a dime with their operational activities.
Yahoo has done so little right as of late. Glam really pushed for new publishers over the last year and now has a great suite of design/decor bloggers. We will see how it goes.
I don’t believe Glam’s numbers, also the content they run on is junk and they cannot sell at a premium.
sorry man, probably this is because you are a guy and don’t get what us women do on the web. glam has a ton of tiny tiny sites we love to go to in fashion, beauty and home. this is their secret, whenever i do a search, i end up on sites on the glam network. advertisers love this so they can reach women like me, right next to fabulous fashion content and of course pay a premium for it.
Hi Jason,
What is the source of the data in the table?
Thx
uh hmm so is he responsible for Panama? and some of the other broken things at Y!… hmm Seems a lot is made of exces leaving Y! in last few years — except the fact that most of them are the exact ‘talent’ that misguided Y! over the years… can anyone name a Y!, maybe other than Qi, that has left and done anything amazing, anywhere?
@Ted R,
The source of the data is comScore Media Metrix. If you are a client, log on, go to:
1. MyMetrix
2. Select Media Metrix
3. Select All Community Properties or any Women Properties
4. Select Reach, Total Minutes, and Total Page Views
5. Run report
Shows Glam 52M users with 1.5B minutes and 1.4B Pages Viewed vs iVillage at 22M users, 112 M minutes and 150 M Page Views for August 2009.
This report is used by brands & agencies to track reach, time and page views delivered on the web.
Nice Tim,
Thx for the clarification and *big* congrats to Glam.
Josh did not run “Yahoo’s entire display ad platform.” He most recently ran the Business Development team within the display platform organization.
When Yahoo split Panama, Search, Display Ad Network, Marketplace, and Yahoo Publisher Network all got assigned to different VP’s. Most of these are gone or leaving. Is chaotic to know who is doing what, who is leaving and what products are for sale.
yahoo is a matrix organization with sales, gm’s, channels and platform. josh ran a significant and very important part of display, not all of it or course. yahoo needs to simplify and motivate and keep key people.
Please go public already, so the world can see what Glam is really worth…
Everyone is talking about OpenTable IPO as it opened the current IPO window. Every investment bank is trying to get in to potential Facebook, LinkedIn, eHarmony and Glam 2010/2011 IPO’s. Ancestry, AOL and others are filing right now. OpenTable revenue in 2009 is same level as LinkedIn & Glam- comes half from ads, rest from restaurant subscription. Their current market cap is $650 million a a public company. LinkedIn is growing 2x faster and Glam is growing 5x faster than OpenTable. Facebook is 10x larger than OpenTable and valued at a higher multiple.
Nothing against Josh, but that has got to be the most unflattering headshot I’ve ever seen – it looks like someone just spilled coffee on him and snapped a photo…
How is landing anyone from Yahoo, a company in such decline, a score? The top execs and the decisions they have made are the reasons for Yahoo’s decline.