Glam Media is No.1 in the women's online property

BY A CORRESPONDENT

19 June, 2007:

New-kid-on-the-block Glam Media has become the number one lifestyle online destination for women, as per latest Web rankings, beating long-time market leader iVillage.

Glam Media boasts of over 17.3 million unique visitors a month in the US and 22 million unique visitors worldwide. iVillage, now at No. 2, has 17.1 million users according to comScore Media Metrix. iVillage has been the No. 1 player in the women's online property for the past eight years.

Glam has been growing rapidly in the past few years with some aggressive marketing and shrewd partnerships. It has garnered over $60 million in funding and is backed by blue-chip venture-capital firms such as Accel Partners (Facebook, BrightCove), DAG Ventures (Friendster, Plaxo), Draper Fisher Jurvetson (Skype: eBay, Technorati), Walden Venture Capital, and Information Capital (Tickle/eMode: Monster, NetObjects).

Glam has tied up with magazine publishers such as Hearst to offer articles from magazines like Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. Glam has also partnered with Oxygen to create an online game the "Fight Girls Fantasy League" which is linked to Oxygen's newest original series Fight Girls, which follows ten female Muay Thai fighters as they compete for the ultimate title.

In early June 2007, Glam signed a multi-year advertising and Web search deal with Google under which Google will be the exclusive provider of web search and contextual ads through its AdSense program. Glam will continue to sell advertisements to brands such as Reebok, Garnier, Dove, MaxFactor, and Herbal Essences.

Glam has a large network of over 300 magazines and blogs, and claims to allow users to easily browse content using its fashion, beauty, and lifestyle channels.

iVillage, part of media giant NBC Universal, has been the leader of the women's online property for nearly the past decade. IVillage has tremendous brand loyalty with most of its traffic coming through the homepage, while Glam collects its traffic from many points and gets very little traffic from its homepage. Reports have pegged Glam's valuation at $500 million while IVillage was valued at $650 million when it was acquired by NBC.

While Glam offers targeted marketing options, iVillage allows more control to advertisers because of its centralised content.

As of now, Glam seems to be enjoying the benefits of the freshness factor and its pitching itself as a younger version of iVillage. Glam is capitalising on the new rankings by launching a new ad campaign from June 18, 2007. As per news reports, Glam will run a full-page color advertisement in the New York Times with the tag line "17 Million Women Just Went Glam." The advertisement further states: "Women have spoken - Glam Media has just overtaken iVillage to become the No. 1 site for women in the U.S."