The following post is from my partner, James Joyner of Outside the Beltway Media via Gone Hollywood, of which I am also the Head Writer.

“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.”

Allie Is Wired has been a proud member of the Glam Publisher Network since July of 2006.

Expanding on what James has said, Glam is much more than just an ‘ad network‘.

First and foremost, Glam is very particular on ‘who‘ they allow into the network. They ensure that the site is of the highest, professionally produced content, who’s core readership is ‘WOMEN‘.

From their flagship site, Glam.com supplies several avenues to filter traffic back and forth amongst the ‘Network‘. A good analogy, they are the heart – - the publishers are the veins.

A few examples:

• Network Blogs Directory – Which lists each blog, both alphabetically and by content.
• Glam Landing Page – Offers top stories from the Network of Publishers.
• Meet the Publishers – Introduces others within the Network, both publishers and readers, to the other various publishers in the Network.
• Glam Network Banner Ads – Along with ‘high-end‘ advertisers with quality produced ads, Glam also promotes itself and the Network of Publishers. The publishers benefit, by being rotated in with direct links to stories on their site.

In doing these things, as the heart of the Network, they are indeed… a destination for ‘WOMEN’.

Yes, they use our traffic for Comscore, as they should. However, they also drive traffic back to us that might not otherwise be there.