Two very different views of women-oriented ad network Glam today – a positive at VentureBeat and a negative at TechCrunch. Of course, the TechCrunch review is negative because Glam is actually an ad network (which it is, but who cares), and the VentureBeat review is positive because it’s got wind of a large deal coming down the pipe.
My whole take on this? Well, the Glam kafuffle is because they’re trying to raise an obscene amount of money – $200 million. For what? Well, Glam’s been poaching bizdev types (see the VentureBeat article) and getting a lot of brand advertising. I bet they’re currently a sales-heavy shop without too much in the way of sophisticated technology, just good reps. And that business model’s not defensible – as the market gets smarter, including the dumb money, a company with excellent geo / contextual / behavioral targeting’s eventually going to target your niche, outperform you, and steal your clients. So that $200 million? That’s for Glam to go shopping. I bet they’re going to pick up an ad technology company that can help them scale their serving and get smarter about user targeting, probably one with good technology but lousy bizdev. The combined company will be far greater than its parts.
