• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 24, 2010

To bolster continued M&A efforts, female-focused media and ad network Glam Media on Friday appointed Adam Roston to run its corporate development efforts. Most recently, Roston served as Director of Corporate Development at Microsoft, where he managed an M&A team covering businesses generating a reported $30 billion in annual revenue.

"We're looking forward to having additional top M&A talent at the helm as we scale out our business and continue our search for complimentary companies that can accelerate our growth and add to our technical capabilities," said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of Glam Media.

In February, Glam raised about $50 million in a Series E round of funding. The funds were earmarked to build what Glam is calling a Digital Media Technology Center, along with global expansion and strategic acquisitions.

Rumors of a forthcoming IPO were stoked when Glam hired Bruce Jaffe as CFO in May. Before leaving to run his own consultancy in 2008, Jaffe ran the corporate development group at Microsoft.

Late last year, Glam said its flagship U.S. women's division had achieved profitability.

By some estimates, however, Glam's star is falling fast. Indeed, the company lost $110 million in common stock value over the past year, according to Business Insider. As a result, Glam fell from #33 to #52 on Business Insider's Digital 100 list of most valuable Web startups.

This summer, Glam acquired ad-technology startup AdPortal -- a spinoff of sports-focused ad network Sportgenic. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Aeris Capital led the $50 million financing round, announced in February, along with existing investors Hubert Burda Media's Burda Digital Holding and Mizuho Capital.

Before Microsoft, Roston worked as an Associate in the Investment Banking M&A and Technology groups at Merrill Lynch in London and Palo Alto.