Technorati and Glam Media shake up online ad industry

Today was a hefty day for the online ad industry, as two important announcements were made. Technorati has launched an ad network and the utterly successful women-focused ad network Glam Media has acquired Monetise, a London-based digital-ad sales start-up.

Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra (by Brian Solis)

Let’s start with the most exciting one: Technorati has launched an ad network for blogs called Technorati Media. They’ve been privately testing the service the last couple of weeks with several advertisers – including T-Mobile, Toyota, and Verizon – and some core sites who reach an audience of 17 million people. CEO Richard Jalichandra wrote in the announcing blog post that “over the next several months, we’ll be adding blogs from the mid and long tail within those verticals.” If he keeps his promise, this might become an interesting network. As for smaller blogs, there isn’t really an alternative for Google Adwords yet. Let’s just hope that at the same time, Technorati will keep improving it’s blog search engine – since it has been pretty slow lately. The recently raised $10 million will probably help.

Speaking of raising money, Glam Media has used its latest staggering round of funding – $85 million dollar – for an acquisition that must help them to “speed the entry into the important U.K. display ad market” – Glam Chairman and CEO Samir Arora said in a release. “Monetise has strong relationships with London advertising agencies and enables Glam to immediately increase its reach in the U.K. market.” All the employees, member sites, and division will be integrated into Glam. Valleywag editor Nicholas Carlson speaks of a “Glam scam” and raises the question whether Glam is still really focused on women sites.

I don’t think Glam minds though, as they’re now operating in a country where the online ad spending is about to take over TV this year.