Glam rocks with women - San Francisco Business Times:

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The 4-year-old Brisbane firm wantss to raise $250 million to expand its rapidlyu growing networkof women-focused sitews and blogs, adding to the $30 millionh raised in three rounds from venture capital firms including and . "I'v e been fielding calls from half a dozeninvestors -- both strategif and financial," said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a Glam boarx member with Accel. "Based upon these earlt indications, I believe they'll be able to raise a round at an attractivre valuation and dilution willbe And, if acquirers show as much interest as investors have, co-founder and CEO Samid Arora could soon unload it for his second Arora sold his last startup, , to for $100 millionj in 1997.
Glam still has more than half of itslast $18.54 million round in the bank, Arorwa said, and thus doesn'ty need to raise money for operating Rather, he wants to expand his web of properties into marketss outside the United States, add new areas of interestg to women and reach additionakl audiences including men and Today Glam owns and operates 20 women'w lifestyle and fashion sites and serves as an ad platforkm for 400 small publishers, most of them one-person bloggeras that otherwise wouldn't draw a large readershilp or first-class advertisers.
"It closelyu reflects the networkTV model," Arora said, addin g that the 90-person company plans to hire 30 more in the next threse months and should be profitable by the end of the The startup's revenue growtyh is nothing if not eye-popping. Near $25 millioj in 2007, Glam expects it to multiplt sixfoldto $150 million next according to a and fundraising summary leakedf to the press in August. Market factorws are on its side: Emarketer estimates onlins advertising will climbto $36.5 billiob in 2011 from $19.5 billion this year. And in the past visitors to women's web sites rose 45 while Internet use overall rose only4 percent, says .
"Goinyg after the female audience right now is a very good placed tobe positioned," said R.J. Hilgers, director of digitaol marketing for interactive agency inSan Francisco, noting that Glam'es rivals include and . It took some persistent but today Glam has amasseda top-shelfr assortment of advertisers from and to Target and . But if ad dealds slow down or the juice drainsw out of the economy and ad spending Glamcould nosedive.
For now, it is able to charge a high CPM (or how much advertisersd pay toreach 1,000 pairs of Its CPM averages $30 and for advertorials can reachh as much as $120, whicg rivals even TV Though Glam won't disclose how much revenue it sharesd with bloggers in its network, a few who previouslyh made little using 's AdSense system have publiclty proclaimed they now make thousands of dollarsw a month with Glam. The Glam flimflam? Glam this week introducedr gee-whiz features that allow users to recommend articles to their friends and more easily navigatethrough Glam'sz oceans of stories, photos and quizzes. It's all designed to turbo-charges traffic.
The company hardly seems to need the Glamsurpassed GE's as the top online destination for women this summer, according to ComScore Media Metrix, attractinyg 20.7 million unique viewers in July to iVillage's 15.9 But bloggers and rivals aroundr the Bay have questioned the accuracy of Glam's labek as "destination" for women, arguing that it has littlr original content, spotty qualitt and is really just an ad network -- and one not only for As such, it is able to claijm credit at ComScore for partners' user numbers. Glam sells ads for a number of populad web sites that have little to do with womenbor fashion.
MyYearbook, for example, contributed more than 15 percentof Glam'ws visitors in June and attracts teen boys and girls. An affiliat site for constructing 3-D avatars called Meez comprisedf more than 7 percentof Glam's traffic that while its fully owned flagship site Glam.com broughg in just over 3 What detractors don't know, Accel's Ranzetta countered, is "The core site brings in a substantialo portion of ad revenue." Further, she said, Glam has the technologhy to target relevant readers of those sites, just as a pringt advertiser might place a travel spot only in a lifestyle section of a magazine.
Arora, who is known for his Italianj suits, French shoes and Silicob Valley bravado, seems unfazed by the brouhaha. "There'z been a lot of controversy excepgt by the reportingagency ComScore. They obviously know what they're he said. Whatever you call it, "Glam is No. 1 in totapl reach in women."