Glam Media grabs $25M as it pursues an IPO

Glam Media has raised an additional $25 million in a series F round of funding, VentureBeat has confirmed with sources familiar with the deal. Glam Media declined to comment on the funding.

Glam Media has been planing to go public since 2011, and reportedly filed an IPO under the JOBS Act in secret back in February. (The regular IPO filing process is public record, while filing under the JOBS Act is not.) This new round isn’t huge, but it will help the company stay the course as it pursues a public offering, our sources say. The news was originally reported by TechCrunch earlier this week.

So what’s taking Glam Media so long to go public? The company seems to be doing quite well; it claims to have a larger audience reach than AOL. And our source said Glam is also planning to hire over 100 new employees (it currently has over 450).

But the new funding and delayed IPO could have something to do with the tumultuous state of media companies and how Wall Street might react to Glam Media going public. Right now we’re seeing lots of movement from major media companies. For example, The Washington Post was recently sold to billionaire Jeff Bezos for a pittance even though he doesn’t have a solid plan for how to make the company profitable. And major advertising firms have recently merged, including Omnicom and Publicis Groupe and Millennial Media and Jumptap. AOL is gutting its local news platform Patch after years of not turning a profit. And, finally, mobile ad giant Velti is in financial trouble, as VentureBeat reported last week.

While Glam Media doesn’t compete directly with any of the aforementioned companies (especially since it took a step away from media with its acquisition of social network platform Ning back in 2011), it’s still considered a player in the media industry. Its business consists of producing content for its Glam and Foodie properties, which also have their own social communities. Glam also has an advertising network that runs on its own properties as well as others.

As for the new funding, the round was led by new investor Keating Capital, with participation from existing investor Hubert Burda Media. Glam Media has raised a total of $180 million in funding to date, including $20 million in debt.