• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 29, 2008

Female-focused e-publisher and ad network Glam Media is finally branching out beyond the fairer sex with CodeBlue, a content channel and ad network for guys. That's according to Industry blog VentureBeat, which published screenshots of the service late last week.

While a Glam spokesman had no comment on CodeBlue, he did confirm the news that the company is cutting 14 jobs, which represents 7% of its 200 employees.

Contrary to reports of financial troubles at the company, the Glam spokesman characterized the cuts as a routine quarterly review of its operations, which similarly occurred around this time last year.

The Glam spokesman confirmed that the company is seeking new talent in the areas of sales, product management, engineering, and marketing.

The content for CodeBlue will be comprised of in-house posts and videos in addition to programming from outside partners, which could include MTV, the NBC/News Corp. venture Hulu, and Sony Music, according to VentureBeat. The venture, which could end up being partially owned by one or more companies, is slated for a November debut.

Glam has aggressively sought out new content channels and distribution platforms. In July, it launched Glam Today, a daily email newsletter and platform. A part of Glam Publisher Media Services, the service curates and distills the more than 5,000 articles created daily by its network of some 500 sites, including Bag Snob, Simplyrecipes.com, Shake Your Beauty and Glam.com.

For brand advertisers, the focus of each daily edition of Glam Today attempts to offer a high level of targeting by audience, vertical focus, and engagement using proprietary Digital Primetime technology in the newly created "Glam Evolution email Ad Services Hyper Targeting system."

In February, Glam raised another $84.6 million in financing, a portion of which it said was earmarked for acquisitions.

The investments valued Glam at approximately $500 million, one source close to the deal said on the condition of anonymity--a hefty valuation for a company that has only been around since 2005.

According to its CEO Samir Arora, Glam operates a unique business model--and a highly profitable one at that, as the company is targeting revenue of $100 million by the end of next year.

As a distributed media business, Glam endeavors to support its publisher partners, while remaining the best way to bring premium brand display advertisers to the Web. Actually owning some of those publishing outlets is obviously a growing priority for Glam.