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Glam Who? Glam Media Faces French Competition From Glam One

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:12:00 +0000

by Patrick Smith @psmith - Nov 3, 2009 3:39 PM ET

Before it has even launched in France, Glam Media is facing competition from a French online media company with a very similar name. Glam One, which owns more than 400 domains and five vertical content networks, on Tuesday announced the launch of its “vertically integrated social media platform” (release). Sound familiar? It should: Glam Media has for years marketed itself as a “vertical content network”.

Glam Media plans to launch in France next year, following roll-outs in the UK, Australia, Canada,Germany and Japan. But there’s a snag: seven-year-old Glam One owns the “Glam” trademark in France and in a shot across Glam Media’s bows it uses its release to remind people that “all unauthorised use of these brands could lead to counterfeiting penalties”.

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Glam One Launches First Socially Integrated Vertical Media Platform in France

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:42:00 +0000

- For immediate release -

Paris, France, November 3^rd, 2009. Glam One (http://www.glam.fr), owner of the “Glam” brand in France and the glam.fr domain name, is announcing the release of France’s first integrated social media platform. The Glam vertical marketplaces bring together professionals into communities organized around targeted sectors. Self-employed independent workers now have an environment to better market their skills. Brands and agencies can post business and contract opportunities, search, browse, and reach professionals.

The Glam vision is to evolve Web engagement by providing talent showrooms, personal productivity and branding tools, and transactional ecommerce storefronts, while facilitating the communication between parties.

Glam One owns over 400 two-syllable “glam” domains and new verticals can be deployed in under 48 hours from start to finish. Glam has already released five verticals in France, including:

GlamFree.com (http://www.GlamFree.com): freelances en communication pour annonceurs et agences.
GlamParis.com (http://www.glamparis.com): photographes, mannequins, stylistes, maquilleurs pour marques de mode, beauté, luxe.
GlamShows.com (http://www.GlamShows.com): artistes du spectacle vivant pour agences, annonceurs et municipalités
GlamAct.com (http://www.GlamAct.com): comédiens pour directeurs de casting et producteurs.
GlamChic.com (http://www.GlamChic.com): hôtesses pour agences de communication événementielle et annonceurs.

The platform supports built-in paid search, display advertising and subscription models and is already available as a white label solution for enterprises and advertisers to deploy their own vertical networks. The Glam architecture is built on innovative, original and integrated best-of-breed tools leveraging the Drupal open source technology maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

Google’s powerful Custom Search technology at the core of each vertical community allows visitors to search targeted content from the open Web as well as opportunities and profiles.
Users can connect and invite friends using their existing FaceBook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo!, MySpace or AOL accounts.
Users can import content and online activities from their respective social network accounts including YouTube, DailyMotion, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Twitter and other networks.
Users can post statuses and automatically publish their profiles to Twitter from within the Glam platform and retweet others using Tweetmeme's integrated technology.

In addition, Glam is announcing that Arnaud Fischer was recently named CEO of the company. Arnaud has over 15 years of experience planning, building, taking to market and monetizing consumer Web services and online advertising solutions with Microsoft (MSFT) in Redmond, WA, AltaVista acquired by Yahoo! (YHOO) in Palo Alto, CA, and AOL Search (TWX) in Dulles, VA.

“Over the past seven years, Glam has worked and established strong relationships with France’s top brands and advertisers. We have also been running a successful pilot program over the past 10 months assessing important behavioral and technology trends that clearly validate the needs of an increasing population of independent workers to better market themselves. Internet users have flooded FaceBook to connect with friends, Meetic.com (Match.com in the US) to fulfill their private lives. We plan to make of the Glam verticals the destinations for independent professionals to better market and sell their skills and talents. Our vision is to build a better, different, disruptive, socially-integrated, real time platform in-synch with the market.”

Privately-held Glam One, with offices in Paris, France, is the legal owner of the “Glam” brand in France. “Glam”® and “Glamchic“® are registered trademarks. All unauthorized use of these brands could lead to counterfeiting penalties.

Contact:

Arnaud Fischer

arnaud [at] glam.fr

33 (6) 21 84 33 96

Twitter: @glamfrance

Facebook.com/pages/Glam/192857155760

Only 9% of SMBs Use Twitter for Marketing

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:33:00 +0000

32% of SMB advertisers plan to include social media in their marketing mix in the next 12 months (Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace) - BIA/Kelsey.

39% of SMBs plan to include customer ratings or reviews
23% plan to incorporate video on their websites
31% plan to include links or ads placed on social sites or blogs

Despite the significant number reporting plans to use social media, far fewer SMBs appear to be putting it into practice today.

9% of SMBs report using Twitter
23% have used social sites in the past 12 months
16% have incorporated video into their website
29% have included customer ratings and reviews.

The adoption of social mediais more prevalent among younger businesses.

16% of businesses that are 3 years old or younger use Twitter versus 2% of those in business 11+ years
44% of businesses that are three years old or younger plan to market this way versus 22% of those in business 11+ years

One in five Americans publish, read status updates

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:24:00 +0000

19% of internet users use Twitter or another service to share updates, up from 11% in Dec. '08

The more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status

39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (laptop, cell phone, game console, ... ) use Twitter, compared to 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices, and 10% of internet users with one device

Median age of a Twitter user is 31. Median age for MySpace is 26. Median age for LinkedIn is 39. Median age for FaceBook is 33

Google Says Internet Advertising Picked Up Steam in Third Quarter

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Google says its advertising business picked up in Q3.

Revenue increased 7% from last year to $5.94 billion, comparing to 3% year-over-year
Revenue was up 8% sequentially after being flat from Q1 to Q2
Net income rose 27% to $1.64 billion
Google is ready to start investing again, hire, pursue acquisitions and partnerships.

"[...] we believe the worst of the recession is behind us [...]" said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt

Facebook Sees Nearly 200% Visit Boost, While Twitter Traffic Also Soars

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:48:00 +0000

Facebook logged 58.6% of all U.S. visits among 155 social networking Websites in Sep. '09, 194% increase Sep. '08.

Twitter growth, up 1,170% from Sep. '08.
Facebook netted 58.6% of all U.S. social networking visits in Sep. '09
In Sep. '08, MySpace was the leading social network with a 66.8% share, logged 30.3% of U.S. social network visits in September, plummeting 55% from last year

Firm Sees Potential For ‘Double-Digit’ Increase In Search Ad Spending This Quarter

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:43:00 +0000

The search-ad market is on the way up again, “potential” for “double-digit” quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year sales growth, Efficient Frontier.

New growth to come from retail holiday shopping
Search-ad spending up 5% in last quarter, compared to last year
Bing is up, attracting greater share of advertisers’ dollars, to 5.3% from 4.3% during the second quarter, most significant growth in finance and travel.

Search Ad Spend Up 10% in Q3 2009, Per SearchIgnite Report

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:37:00 +0000

SearchIgnite has released their quarterly search advertising spend report.

U.S. search spend flat year-over-year but up 10% quarter-over-quarter.
Most notable increase from multi-channel retailers, spend up by 40% from Q3 '08 to Q3 '09
Microsoft 15% increase in ad spend

Online Ad Spending in Western Europe

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:33:00 +0000

France and Germany are relatively mature markets for online advertising.

The Italian and Spanish markets are developing at a slower pace, chiefly because Internet use is less widespread.
Throughout Western Europe, total advertising spending has plunged with the financial downturn. But the Internet has withstood recessionary pressures far better than other media.
Online ad spending will post important gains in 2009 and regain significant momentum in 2010.
Paid search has proved the most popular online ad format in these tough times, while European marketers’ commitment to display, classified ads and e-mail has been somewhat weaker.

Consumer Spending Index Reaches Two-Year High

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:22:00 +0000

The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index rose 11.7% in Sep. '09, climbing to 3.44%.

The tax burden continues to fall with the weakening of the economy
Initial unemployment claims have dropped from 694,000 in Mar. '09 to about 263,000 in Sep
Real wages are up 4.8% from a year ago
The pace of decline in home prices has slowed significantly

Glam France

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:26:00 +0000

Glam.fr est une plateforme de vertical social media offrant aux individus et organisations du conseil en personnalités et célébrités, des showrooms de talents, des outils de productivités et de branding personnel, des espaces de communication et des ecommerce storefronts.

Glam France

View more presentations from Arnaud Fischer.

eMarketer: Online Ad Slide Nearing Bottom

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:13:00 +0000

The online ad market is close to bottoming out, according to new report issued by industry tracker eMarketer.

Spending will continue to decline for the second half of '09, but that decline should decelerate.
The fact that the display ad market only declined by 1% the first 6 months of the year fueled optimism for the remainder of '09.
Expect decline to be less than the first half
Online ad networks should continue to thrive in the second half of the year

Social Media Has Direct Influence on Brand Search

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:37:00 +0000

Searchers who use social media are more engaged with brands, more likely to be looking to buy, GroupM Search & comScore . Consumers exposed to social media are more likely to click on a brand’s paid search ad. Investing in social media marketing can both increase initial brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has decided to purchase.

Significant and direct correlation between discovery of brands through social media and search behavior
Increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).
Social media users exposed to a brand spent 20% more time online
Consumers exposed to both brand and paid search spent almost 3 times more time online
Searchers who engage with social media far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms
Consumers exposed to a brand and paid-search are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand
50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to social media and paid search.
Social media users are 1.7 times more likely to search with the intension of making a list of brands or products to consider purchasing
Consumers exposed to influenced social and paid search exhibit 223% heavier search behavior
50% of social-media exposed searchers search daily for product terms versus with 33%.
Consumers searching on brand product terms, exposed to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links
Among searchers using a brand’s product name in a search query, the CTR increased from 4.5% to 11.8% when users were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search

Social Network Advertising Nearing An Inflection Point

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:12:00 +0000

Two of the most important trends in online advertising are the pervasiveness of social networks and the growing use of "owned platforms", Business Insider by Rory Maher. These trends threaten to disrupt traditional content publishers who sell ad space, because they allow advertisers to go direct.

Social networks have now impossible to ignore.
Advertisers are building "owned platforms" directly onto social networks, likely to accelerate
Advertisers seek more effective ways to market on social networks
Brands are struggling how to best use social networks
As traditional forms of advertising prove to be ineffective
Advertisers turn to "owned platforms"
Social networking will be so intertwined with the average person's life that brands have to figure out a way or miss reaching consumers where they are most engaged

Social Media Boosts Search Ad Clicks

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Consumer searchers were 2.5 times more likely to click after exposure to a brand's social marketing, by Brian Morrissey

Consumers who engage with brands on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube show higher propensity to search for, click on brands' search ads
Consumers exposed to a brand's social campaign 2.8 times more likely to search for, click rates rose 50%
Engagement with brand in social media has long-term benefits

GLAM PLUS GLAM

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:14:00 +0000

GLAM

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE

Pour diffusion immédiate – Mardi 6 octobre 2009

GLAM PLUS GLAM

GLAM (http://www.glam.fr) devient encore plus GLAM en passant de 4 à 8 expertises de talents. En effet GLAM lance GlamAct (http://www.glamact.com comédiens), GlamChic (http://www.glamchic.com hôtesses), GlamFree (http://www.glamfree.com freelances en communication) et GlamShows (http://www.glamshows.com spectacles vivants).

GLAM est la plateforme de vertical social media qui a pour vision d’offrir aux entreprises, professionnels indépendants, auto-entrepreneurs et talents du conseil en personnalités, des showrooms de compétences, des outils de productivité et de branding personnel, des espaces de communication et des ecommerce storefronts.

Ces quatre nouvelles plateformes permettront aux clients de GLAM de sélectionner et contacter des comédiens et freelances pour leurs campagnes de publicité, ainsi que des hôtesses et artistes pour leurs événements d’entreprises. La clientèle de GLAM est composée à 50% de grandes entreprises et à 50% de leurs agences de communication.

Ce développement est réalisé sous la direction de Arnaud FISCHER, 41 ans, qui après avoir travaillé 20 ans aux USA (Microsoft, AOL, AltaVista/Yahoo! et autres startups Internet de la Silicon Valley) rentre en France pour s’associer à GLAM, dont il devient CEO.

« Aucun prestataire n’avait jusqu’à ce jour permis aux entreprises d’entrer en contact direct avec autant de talents, dit Arnaud FISCHER. La puissance du web permet ce formidable bon en avant, en complément des méthodes plus traditionnelles basées sur le conseil. GlamFree, que GLAM a fait évolué du mode conseil à une plateforme web, propose déjà l’accès à 3200 freelances en communication. Notre ambition est de déployer cette technologie à d'autres segments verticaux, en France et à l'international. »

GLAM a été fondé en 2003 par Vincent FISCHER et Nicolas TEIL avec GlamSpeak conférenciers et animateurs, puis GlamCom célébrités pour marques (2005), GlamBoard réalisateurs pour films publicitaires (2006) et GlamKast models castings (2008). GLAM est propriétaire de la marque de commerce GLAM en France et du nom de domaine www.glam.fr porte d’entrée de l’univers GLAM.

-30-

Pour informations :

GlamBoard : Bob DUTERTRE, bdutertre@GlamBoard.com

GlamCom : Vincent FISCHER, vfischer@GlamCom.com

GlamKast : Thomas MARTY, tmarty@GlamKast.com

GlamSpeak : Nicolas TEIL, nteil@GlamSpeak.com

Glam : Arnaud FISCHER, arnaud@Glam.fr

80 new sites created per minute

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:11:00 +0000

There are now 183 million domain names registered across all Top Level Domains, a 3% increase over Q4 '08 and 12% over last year. This means that nearly 11.8 million new domain names were registered across all TLDs in the first quarter of 2009. That's 91 domain names registered per minute and if about 88 percent resolve to Websites, that would mean that roughly 80 new sites were created a minute or one a second.

Mad Avenue Blues

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:34:00 +0000

EU 'Net Marketers Optimistic About Online Advertising

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:30:00 +0000

European advertisers choose online advertising over traditional media like TV, newspapers, and magazines - European Interactive Advertisers Association.

Just 8% of the advertisers said they cut budgets for online advertising.
Seven in 10 said their online ad spend is increasing in '09.
Nearly four in 10 advertisers said budgets are being reallocated from TV (37%). Some 32% are moving funds away from newspapers, 46% from magazines.

And the trend will likely continue throughout 2009, according to the report. Online advertising is playing a more central role in overall ad strategies

47% of advertisers consider online solutions as an essential factor within the marketing mix, up from 38% in last year's research.
16% are allocating larger budgets to pan-regional rather than country-specific campaigns - up from 11% last year.

64% of advertisers increased their paid search investments. Email, display and video advertising were cited as most popular tools. Mobile is also growing: 30% of marketers are making use of mobile formats within their overall strategy.

Interactive Ad Growth Still Healthy

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Interactive advertising is heading for growth over the next seven years, according to Forrester Research Interactive Advertising Forecast.

Interactive online advertising (display, email, mobile, search, and social media) will experience a 17% CAGR, totaling almost $55 billion in spending over the next seven years.

Five key online advertising channels will see the following 7-year CAGR, according to the report:

social media - 34%
mobile - 27%
display - 17%
search - 15%
email - 11%

Overall interactive advertising spend will grow an estimated 10% - from 9% of all ad spending in 2008 to 19% in '14.

SEO rising faster than overall search marketing

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:54:00 +0000

U.S. spending on search engine marketing will nearly double from $12.2 billion in '08 to $23.4 billion in '13.

All four types of search marketing will gain more marketer dollars each year.
Marketers will invest approximately 63% of their annual U.S. search engine marketing spending in paid search from '08 through '13.
SEO spending will rise from a 12.7% share in '08 to a 16.5% share in '13.

Social Networking Attracts 75% of Online Europeans

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:33:00 +0000

Of the 282.7 million European internet users who went online in Dec. '08, 211 million visited a social networking site, 74.6%, according to comScore.

The UK (79.8%) and Spain (73.7%) had the highest social-networking penetration.
Norway (58.9%) and Austria (49.7%) had the lowest.
France (63.9%) was the 3rd. largest with 21.7 million visitors in Dec. '08 behind the UK with 29.3 million visitors and Germany at 24.9 million visitors
The total number of French internet visiting a social network was up 45% year over year.

Facebook.com ranked as the most popular social networking site in France, with 12 million visitors, growing 443% over the past year after launching a French language user interface in February. Skyrock ranked second with 11 million visitors (up 8%). MySpace Sites (3 million visitors) and Flickr.com (1.8 million visitors) rounded out the top five.

Performance-Based Ads to Increase in ‘09

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:25:00 +0000

B2B marketers to increase spending on performance-based ads in '09 at the expense of traditional display ads because of clear measurable returns, according to a Econsultancy and Convera.

78% of advertisers planning to raise spending on CPA formats
67% plan to increase spending on cost-per-lead (CPL) ads
Just under half on cost-per-click (CPC).
29% to increase spending on CPM (display mostly)

Search is the economy ... stupid!

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:37:00 +0000

All sectors of advertising, marketing services and media trimmed jobs in Dec. except internet-media companies and web-search portals, according to Bradley Johnson , AdAge.com.

The U.S. advertising and media industry slashed 18,700 jobs in Dec. '08, bringing job losses in this recession to 65,100, 3.9% since Dec. '07.
The ad industry employed 1.59 million people as of December.
Internet-media companies and web-search portals added a dismal 800 jobs, bringing employment to 82,200.
Media companies eliminated 41,000 U.S. jobs, 4.6% from the time the recession began.
Advertising/marketing-services firms cut 24,100 jobs, or 3.1%.
Among advertising/marketing-services companies, ad agencies last year cut 6,000 jobs, or 3.2% of staff, and graphic-design firms eliminated 7,400 jobs, or 9.9%.

There were bright spots: Marketing-consulting employment rose by 2,200 ... I feel blessed ;-)

Search growth slowing, only part of the picture

arnaud@glam.fr (Arnaud Fischer) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:03:00 +0000

US search advertising spending fell 8% in Q4 '08, according to firm Efficient Frontier.

Reductions among smaller companies that spend less than $50,000 on search ads per month more profound, cut their spending by 23%. Advertisers that spend more than $200,000 on search monthly cut spending by 9%. Those that spend between $50,000 and $200,000 held flat

Search ad spending among financial advertisers fell 20%
Automotive spending dropped 15%
Retail advertisers increased spending 9% in Q4

"Even though the SEM company says US search ad spending fell by 8% in Q4 '08, reported earnings from the major search companies counter that data", David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst.

Google’s US net search revenues in Q4 up by 17% year over year.
Yahoo! reported US search revenues in Q4 up by 18%.

US search advertising expected to grow 14.9% in '09 to $12.3 billion, down from 21.4% in '08, according to eMarketer.