California-based digital content company Glam Media is growing its reach into Canada with ca.Glam.com, a new website aimed at fashionistas aged 18-55 looking for beauty, fashion and lifestyle content customized for this market.
Aya McMillan, Glam Media Canada’s editorial director, is heading up the site. She said Glam Media Canada’s site will be set apart from competitors such as MSN, Yahoo and Chatelaine by of its wide range of content creators.
“It’s unique voices [that are] meticulously curated based on what [readers’] passion points are, and we really take a community-centric approach,” McMillan said. “We’re collaborating with over 100 different content creators that are considered the most influential and authentic voices in this market.”
As part of the site’s launch, P&G has signed on as the advertising partner for a holiday gift guide feature.
Content creators are at the core of Glam Media’s existence, said Mark Boxer, vice-president of Glam Canada. The company has access to more than 4,000 of them around the world. (Glam Media originally started in 2004 as an e-commerce site, but changed to a content curation model focused on women and their areas of interest.)
Since acquiring Boxer B-Scene Media (BBS Media) in March 2011, Boxer said Glam’s mandate has been to have the company “proliferate throughout Canada and really become a force to be reckoned with.”
According to Boxer, aside from a stronger Canadian presence, the motivation for starting the new site is quite simple: “Our advertisers are asking for it and our audience is looking to Glam to be the lens through which all the information out there is filtered into what’s really important to women.”
Since McMillan joined Glam Media Canada in June, the company has expanded the categories it covers. “Before we were focused on moms and parenting, now with Aya’s input we have increased our reach into the fashion, style and lifestyle categories that include entertainment, décor, travel, beauty and food,” Boxer said.
Glam Media Canada, which includes properties such as OhBabyMagazine.com and Divine.ca, has a combined reach of roughly 10 million users. Beyond its California headquarters, the company has global offices that include New York, Tokyo, Paris, London and Mumbai. According to comScore, it has more than 244 million global monthly unique visitors.
