Valleywag
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deathwatch
Glam Media making publishers wait four months for cash
When will Samir Arora admit that Glam Media, his online ad network, is running out of money? Glam buys up ad space on websites and resells it to advertisers, as well as operating a few token websites itself. But it has overpaid for much of that space, and revenues are running dangerously short of projections. Now, Glam is delaying its payments to partners by up to 120 days, claiming that the move is necessary because advertisers are slowing their payments to Glam. Which is utter nonsense. More » -
online advertising
The ad network purge begins
Online ad networks are set to consolidate, reports the Wall Street Journal. There are 400-some networks, which act as middlemen between advertisers and publishers to broker space on websites, modeled after Google's successful AdSense business. But the big deals in this space have already taken place — aQuantive to Microsoft, Right Media to Yahoo, DoubleClick to Google. The remainders are starting to realize that, like bad leftovers, they're about to be thrown out. So the bigger players are starting to snap up the smaller ones, at bargain prices. More » -
commentards
Be careful what you write about Glam
It's a predictable routine: Write about Glam Media, Samir Arora's dangerously bubbly online-advertising startup, and get bombarded by comments from website operators for whom Glam sells ads. The latest victim: Saul Hansell of the New York Times, who dared to point out that most of Glam's traffic comes not from the kind of high-quality, editorially driven websites his salespeople promise to advertisers, but from horoscopes, social networks, and gaming sites. Two Glam publishers promptly weighed in. It almost makes one wonder if, like a political campaign, Arora gins up faux grassroots complaints. (Valleywag has attracted its own reliable Glam commenter, AretinaAegeus.) Like a well-done Astroturfing, as the process is known in politics, the comments seem genuine enough — original wording, no cutting-and-pasting of talking points. But the process may backfire on Arora. Goaded by the commenters, Hansell updated his piece with a more concise — and damning — explanation of why Glam may be scamming its advertisers: More » -
online advertising
Layoff-ridden Glam Media launches men's site Brash.com
We were so hoping that our source was kidding when we first heard of online ad network Glam Media's plans for a men's website called Brash last month. Alas, no. The site has launched, but no need to visit: If you've read Esquire or Men's Journal, and can imagine the palest possible imitation of those publications, then you've got the picture. What's really happening here: More » -
rumormonger
Layoff-happy Glam Media losing customers
Samir Arora, the superslick salesman who runs online-advertising startup Glam Media, spun last week's layoffs of 14 people as a routine move to contain costs. Just another amazing act of presciently efficient management at a company Arora has sold to investors as the future of all media. What story, we wonder, will Arora come up with to explain the company's disappearing customers? More » -
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online advertising
Brash sex change for Glam Media
Samir Arora, the CEO of online-ad network Glam Media, is often described as "brash." Is that where he got the idea for his newest network? A tipster says Glam's "Brash" network will target men. Glam has long positioned itself as a way to reach women online, but people with access to Glam's real demographics say that the split is close to 50/50. Rather than admit he's been lying to advertisers looking to reach women all along, how gutsy of Arora to turn the deception into a new product to sell. The only question: Who's going to sell Brash if Glam's rumored layoffs come to pass? -
rumormonger
Layoffs at ad network Glam Media
A tipster says Glam Media, the women-focused online-ad network, is going through "material layoffs" — 14 out of 200 employees, mostly in sales, Silicon Alley Insider now confirms. The cutbacks, coming just seven months after Glam raised $85 million, mark the popping of the ad-network bubble. The move is consistent with what I've heard from inside the company: Tales of wild spending, chaotic decisions, and mismanagement. Glam, cofounded by slick serial entrepreneur Samir Arora, has embraced a risky business. Arora pitched the company as the future of online advertising, a "distributed media" network, targeting the lucrative female market, overtaking established players like Time Inc., Hearst, and NBC and transforming the economics of the industry. In reality? More » -
online advertising
ComScore ruins ad networks' favorite scam
Web metrics firm ComScore says it going to begin tracking ad networks' "potential reach" and "actual reach" for online-ad buyers and sellers. A translation: Ad networks, in theory, can place ads on all of a Web publisher's pages, and those are the numbers they trot out when luring ad dollars. Operations like Glam Media compound the confusion by portraying some of the sites they represent as if they were websites they owned. In practice, publishers of a respectable size use networks only to fill a small percentage of their least valuable inventory. The net effect: industrywide, advertising inventories look much larger than they actually are, leading ad buyers to drive harder bargains. If ComScore can expose this part of the ad-network scam, publishers may benefit from higher rates. Ad buyers? They won't complain: As soon as they've spent their clients' online budgets, it's time for a two-martini lunch. More » -
myyearbook
MyYearbook scores $13 million to cater to more 13 year olds
MyYearbook, a social network for teens turned off by the old people thronging Facebook and MySpace, has raised an additional $13 million in venture capital. The social-network startup wooed by Barry Diller's IAC last year, but a deal never happened. The site claims to be the third biggest social network in the U.S. More » -
samir arora
Glam Media puts out press release to promote founder's new wife
Only in Silicon Valley would a marriage be announced by press release. No, Glam Media founder Samir Arora wasn't so crass as to issue a communiqué about his wedding; but he let word slip in the announcement of a new online-advertising network from Glam for health and wellness websites. The former Rebecca Bogle, now Rebecca Arora, is running the network. The two married in March 2008, according to an online gift registry. Her LinkedIn profile tells us that, in addition to working as Glam's "wellness editorial director," she's also a "Zentherapy bodytherapy practitioner at Izii." Aside from that, she had stints at Oracle and Accenture, both less than two years in length. Working for either company, even that long, could lead one to need therapy — as might getting married to the erratic and mercurial Samir Arora. Arora's love note to his bride: More »
glam media
San Francisco, 4:29 AM
Fri Dec 5
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