Glam Media Acquires AdaptiveAds
Acquisition of Silicon Valley Ad-Technology Startup Provides Brand
Engagement and Ad Optimization Across Content Verticals for Brand Ads
Using BrandWords(TM)
Opens Glam Technology Center in India
SILICON VALLEY, Calif., NEW YORK and MUMBAI, India/PRNewswire/ -- Glam Media, Inc. (www.GlamMedia.com), a vertical
content network with more than 900 publishers worldwide and a comScore
Media Metrix Top 10 Web property, today announced the acquisition of
AdaptiveAds, a venture-backed display ad targeting and optimization
company based in San Francisco and Mumbai, India. AdaptiveAds brings
smart, creative audience targeting, adaptive ad optimization and brand
engagement tracking to Glam Media's powerful brand ads platform--Glam
Media Evolution(TM), and enables both agency direct and self-service
media buying solutions. Through the acquisition, Glam Media is opening
an office in Mumbai and establishing an engineering presence in Pune,
India. In December 2008, Glam Media reached more than 100 million
unique visitors globally for the first time as reported by comScore
Media Metrix.
"AdaptiveAds supercharges Glam Media's brand engagement technology,
delivering insight into how ads behave with different audiences and
giving brands the ability to dynamically act based on this knowledge,"
said Samir Arora, chairman & CEO of Glam Media. "This acquisition
will help optimize results for brand ad campaigns across Glam Media's
targeted content verticals, passion groups and geographies."
AdaptiveAds' next generation ad serving platform, now renamed
GlamAdapt, makes complex real-time ad serving and targeting decisions
with the primary goal of optimizing brand engagement across a range of
metrics critical for brand advertisers. GlamAdapt provides a
breakthrough level of reporting intelligence for brands by delivering
valuable return on investment analysis that is essential for managing
marketing programs in the current economic environment. The platform
will arm brands with insights into not only which specific vertical
audiences or passion groups respond to their ads, but also which
messages and marketing solutions provide the greatest engagement levels
for each type of audience.
GlamAdapt BrandWords(TM) brings a simple yet revolutionary
technology for advertisers to target audiences for brand engagement,
similar to keywords used to optimize direct response search ads. Today,
brands are limited to either terms a user may have searched for or weak
contextual terms, neither of which provide the insight needed to
execute successful campaigns. BrandWords are built the way brands
think--by offering a wide range of targetable terms such as audience,
context, sites, behavior, primetime and placement. For example, an
advertiser can select Women 24-40, Fashionista, Beauty, At Home and
Above the Fold for a campaign for a beauty product; Men, Urban, New
York, Very High Income, Influential, and Follows Style could help
launch a new luxury product. GlamAdapt helps find the best match for
the BrandWords selected, then dynamically monitors and adapts the
campaigns to ensure the best brand reach and engagement.
AdaptiveAds' self-service ad technology will become the platform for
GlamAds, the only self-serve brand advertising system of its kind
focused on premium display. The display ads direct self-serve system,
offering both vertical targeting and scale, will let agencies quickly
create and place custom media ad buys across any verticals in the Glam
Media network. A version of GlamAds will also provide the same service
directly to small and medium-sized businesses, bringing purchasing
power and pricing transparency never before seen in the premium online
display ad ecosystem. Publishers in the network will be able to manage
their primetime ads, advertorials, sponsorships and widget ads, and use
GlamAds to manage non-primetime inventory.
"The integration of Glam Media and AdaptiveAds delivers the next
generation of ad targeting, serving, optimization and reporting
technologies that provide brands smart audience engagement not possible
in print and TV advertising," said Yogesh Sharma, CEO of AdaptiveAds.
"Together Glam and AdaptiveAds are bringing advanced technology to help
break down the barriers to effective brand ads online."
AdaptiveAds is a three-year old start-up with investors who include
top-tier VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, key Silicon Valley startup
investors and a list of blue-chip customers. AdaptiveAds' US-based
employees will join Glam's ad products team in Brisbane, Calif. Offices
in Mumbai and Pune will become Glam's engineering and product
development centers in India. AdaptiveAds co-founder and CEO Yogesh
Sharma will become Vice President & General Manager of Ad Solutions
at Glam Media. Glam is also reorganizing its technology, engineering
and content teams to focus on brand engagement and display
optimization, and expects to hire engineering employees in India.
AdaptiveAds co-founder Sanjay Sharma will lead the team in India. Glam
expects a net addition of approximately 20 new employees with this
acquisition, bringing the total employees at Glam globally to 200.
"Technology innovation has been one of Glam's key differentiators
since the beginning," said Fernando Ruarte, co-founder and CTO of Glam
Media. "The acquisition of AdaptiveAds helps Glam bring advanced
targeting, optimization and tracking technology using simple BrandWords
to a reach of over 100 million unique visitors globally."
More than 1,000 of the world's top brands have taken advantage of
Glam Media's creative advertising solutions and sophisticated
ad-targeting and measurement system. Glam Evolution(TM), the Web's
first primetime inventory placement and vertical targeting platform,
enables vertical targeting by audience, content, primetime and
placement, filling a sweet spot in brand display advertising, which
stands out in contrast to remnant display advertising solution. Glam
Evolution(TM) is deployed across the Glam distributed media network of
900+ publishers worldwide. Both GlamAds and GlamAdapt will be launched
as part of Glam Evolution(TM) platform later this quarter on Glam.com
women's and Brash.com men's vertical networks.
About Glam Media
Glam Media is the pioneer and global leader of Vertical Content
Networks, leveraging a revolutionary new media model that brings brand
advertisers to targeted vertical audiences online. With more than 900
publishers worldwide, Glam Media comprises Glam.com, a carefully
curated network of popular and influential lifestyle women's websites,
blogs and magazines, and Brash.com, the newly launched network catering
exclusively to men. Glam Media's reach is deep and far-reaching; it is
a comScore Top 10 Web property, with a total reach of 61 million unique
monthly visitors in the U.S. and 110 million uniques globally, and is
also a Top 10 Display Ad Publisher. Glam Media is #1 for Women in US,
UK, and Germany, and has been the fastest growing company in 2007 and
2008. Glam Media is backed by Hubert Burda Media, GLG Partners, Accel
Partners, DAG Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Walden Venture Capital
and Information Capital. The company is headquartered in New York City,
New York and Silicon Valley, California, with international offices in
London, Munich, Berlin and Tokyo.
Source: Glam Media
CONTACT: Caroline Hacker of Glam Media, +1-650-270-2183,
caroline@glammedia.com; or Katie Smith-Adair of The Morris + King Company,
+1-212-561-7475, katie.smith-adair@seismk.com
Web Site:
http://www.glammedia.com/
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