Exciting News About Ning + Glam Media

[Jason Rosenthal]

Today, I’m excited to announce some great news for Ning and our customers. We’ve signed an agreement to be acquired by Glam Media. You can also read my post on the Ning Blog.



Glam Media pioneered connecting the world’s top brand advertisers with targeted vertical audiences online. Glam has a reach of 84 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. and 200 million visitors globally. They have more than 2,500 publishers organized across multiple vertical categories including: Glam.com for women, Glam Entertainment for adults, Brash.com for men and Bliss.com for health and wellness seekers.



We will continue to provide you with the most powerful platform to create, grow, and manage passionate online communities. Ning will continue as a separate division within Glam Media. No immediate changes to the team, the product, or the business are planned as a result of this, and we’ll continue on our path of releasing new innovative features to make your Ning sites more successful.



Some of our Ning communities are already part of the Glam Media network, and we’ll share updates to the roadmap and information on how to apply to join the Glam Network in the coming weeks.

 

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Want to know more about Glam Media and details about this acquisition?

Glam CEO Samir Arora: No Plans To Force Ning Advertising Rev Share

Glam Media acquires site builder Ning

Marc Andreesen's blog

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[soaringeagle]

ok so whats trhis mean for your average creator?

and i supose glams all bout style and "glam" stuff well what if yoir network like mines not very "glam" but an alternative style thatssay aboput tatoos peircings dreadlocks etc that are stryle related but not "glam" in any way

 

just curius about what this all means exactly i guess

[Brian K]

I hope it means we can get the chance to run glam network ads.

I hear they get a very good cpm.

Other than that, I am just happy to hear that Ning is being bought by a legit company

that will be around for until my exit strategy kicks in :)

[DShan]

This is going to make a lot of us extremely nervous. 

 

Immediate questions: 

How does the new relationship affect our ability to generate our own revenue and build our own ad networks, if the entire site is under the Glam family?

How does our ownership of our networks change? 

What's our relationship to Glam? Are we customers? Ad channels? 

The campaigns they plan to implement - can we say no to them? I've seen this Ad Platform + Distribution Community thing before.

 

Congrats to you and your team for finding a next step for Ning, but at what point does it stop feeling as if you're all playing hot potato with an ugly baby? There's an incredible amount of value in this network but it often feels as if you're acting under the assumption that it'd be harder to leave than deal with the way Ning is run/managed.

 

[John McDonald]

DShan,

 

Thanks.  As Jason described in his post above, we feel this is great news for our NCs.  You will continue to be our customers and we will continue provide you with the same powerful platform and services that we offered before the deal.  Likewise, you will continue to have full control and ownership over your networks and flexibility to generate your own revenue as you like.  More specifically, you will continue to be able to use any advertising service you like and serve your own ads and sponsorships. 

 

The exciting part of this deal is that we will now be able to offer our customers attractive advertising opportunities through Glam Media.  These will be optional, but we expect many NCs will be interested in participating.

[soaringeagle]

ok so how soon will we be able tto run these glam ads and what all is involved  since they are cpm is it ok to run below the footer

is there trafic requirements whats the cpm

im sure u will have alotta questions like this

i'm definately interested in a cpm solution to help alongside the cpc

 

[Eric Suesz]

Lots of great questions, soaringeagle. To be honest, we don't have that info to share today, but we will do our best to put together all the details in a way that makes sense and simplifies any decisions you might want to make. 

[RF]

OK so how much is this add on?

[Alexander]

This is not an add on it's a take over (acquisition).

[Vipster]

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/glam-media-buys-ning-social-p...

 

Together, Ning and Glam say they can reach more than 240 million users. Publishers in the Glam network will have have access to Ning's social networking tools, while Glam will start running its brand ads along existing Ning properties.

 

Will it be optional to run Glam ads? Could you also elaborate on the part about applying to be members of the Glam network? Do we have to apply? Do we have to join? What if our application fails?

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, David. Yes, any participation in Glam Media's ad network would be entirely optional. I can't elaborate about the details of applying yet, but we definitely will share details about that as the weeks go on. 

 

[soaringeagle]

define "weeks" cause over 4 is a month

just wondering about how long this might take

[Eric Suesz]

Many weeks. Definitely more than four. To be clear: You won't have to run any ads you don't want to, and you won't have to participate if you don't want to.