Is Glam A Sham?

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Monday, August 13, 2007

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has really blown the doors off the advertising industry by conducting “A minimal amount of research” to discover that Glam Media is “an ad network, not a content site.”

Well . . . yeah.

Arrington’s “research” probably consisted of reading Glam’s About Us page, the first paragraph of which states:

Glam Media, the new number one women’s Web property, runs owned-and-operated lifestyle websites and an online media network of publishers with more than 19.1 million unique visits a month in the United States. Glam Media, brings together the company’s flagship site, Glam.com, other Glam-owned sites, the Glam Publisher Network of more than 350 popular lifestyle and fashion websites, blogs, and magazines, and select syndicated content from leading media companies.

Arrington, who apparently doesn’t have an editor, repeats over and over variations of “They’re little more than an ad network that is claiming the traffic for all of its partners to make it look like a huge womens destination site.” In each case, he omits the apostrophe that would render “womens” a possessive rather than a plural.

VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall notes that most of Glam’s critics are merely “jealous competitors.” That seems right. Indeed, TechCrunch in general and Arrington in particular are constantly touting PopSugar, which is launching a competing ad network.

Gone Hollywood has been part of the Glam network for eleven months now as an ad partner. We’re independently owned and operated but contribute our numbers to their ComScore ratings as part of the partnering agreement. In return, Glam delivers substantial advertising content to us at a rate better than we’d been getting elsewhere.

Is Glam A Sham?

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