Founded just seven and a half years ago, Glam Media is one of Silicon Valley’s few media success stories. Beginning in the women’s interest vertical and expanding to entertainment, health and wellness and now food, Glam acquired Ning last September and is rumored to be preparing an IPO for later this year. Glam’s great achievement, it claims, is to pioneer “vertical media” and thus to “transform the way consumers interact with content”.
But the truth of Glam’s success, its CEO Samir Arora acknowledged when he came into our San Francisco studio last week, is actually more complex than it first appears. Yes, Arora agreed, Glam’s “big haired arsed idea” was to understand that media was no longer simply a hits business and that Internet users want to connect and comment rather than simply consume content. But, as he also revealed, Glam’s strength lies as much as in executing advertising sales as in aggregating vertical media – resulting in a company that not only has successful curated content but has also curated its advertisers.
This is the final section of a two part interview with Arora. Last week, the former Apple executive told me about Glam’s latest vertical play, Foodie.com.
Glam Media is a vertical media company, comprised of both Glam-owned-and-operated properties (Glam.com, Brash.com, and soon, Bliss.com) and a publisher network of 2000+ lifestyle websites and blogs. Glam Media’s vertical media model aims to enable premium brands to connect with audiences online. Glam Media is #1 in global reach for women online, with approximately 90 million unique monthly visitors in the US and more than 200 million uniques globally. Glam Media is a comScore Top 10 U.S. Web Property, is...
Samir Arora founded Glam Media to create a better way for brand advertisers to connect with their audiences on the Web. Arora was previously the chairman of Emode/Tickle, Inc, which was later sold to Monster in June 2004. Prior to that, Arora was chairman and CEO of NetObjects, Inc. where he drove the creation of the first web site building product NetObjects Fusion. Arora also currently serves as chairman of Information Capital LLC, a venture-capital fund based in Woodside,...
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