The ad network was the brainchild of three moms who already ran “by moms and for moms” companies, Michelle Davies, Carrie Anne Badov, and Carla Young. “Advertising in Canada is evolving,” says Young. “Our aim is to connect brands to the relevant conversations that are already happening online on family and parent publisher sites. We know how highly valuable those influencers are to brands and how challenging harnessing that influence can be.”

On its website, EverythingMom states that it is “the first Canadian vertical ad network for, by and about parent and family publishers.” It cites data that indicates some 3.5 million Canadian moms spend an average of 75 minutes daily online and visit an average of over 107 pages per day. This is more than they spend on any other media, including watching television, listening to the radio, or reading newspapers or magazines.

The vertical ad network is just the latest offering from EverythingMom.com, a full-fledged online community “for busy moms to kick back for a few minutes, communicate, share and learn.”

WEBSITE

One look at EverythingMom and you quickly see the depth of the online experience. Moms can take advantage of:

• A free membership to the Community, where moms can meet each other, share stories, post reviews, and enter contests
• Mom Chat, where “moms come together to chat on a number of topics that matter”
• Groups, an entry point into special interest groups, including “Pregnant Moms Group,” “Working Mommas,” and “Mom Bloggers”
• Blogs, a page that lists the latest posts in all Mom Blogs (EverythingMom is particularly active in encouraging moms to start and maintain their own blogs)
• Forum, active discuss3ions on a wide variety of topics
• Meal Plans – weekly meal plans for moms
• Mom Pages – a comprehensive listing of Mom Blogs and Mom Businesses
• Videos and contests.

SOCIAL MEDIA

While social media, especially Facebook, has received the lion’s share of online attention, blogging is a phenomenon that has grown rapidly over the last several years. Technorati estimated last January that there were over 130 million blogs in existence at that time. Since EverythingMom is heavily into blogging, it offers a section on its website called “Best of Everything,” in which it consolidates relevant blog entries from around the blogosphere. EverythingMom also provides links to “Featured Mom Blogs” and “Latest Mom Blogs.”

Not surprisingly, EverythingMom has an active Facebook page, on which it maintains on-going discussions with community members. EverythingMom also makes frequent use of Twitter and has over 8,400 Twitter followers.

Elements of EverythingMom are similar to BlogHer.com, an information community that reaches more than 25 million women each month and also encourages women to blog. BlogHer, however, is organized into different topic areas (Careers, Entertainment, Family, Feminism, etc.) and does not focus exclusively on mothers.

EverythingMom creates a new venue for mommy bloggers to come together and leverages that community to the hilt. EverythingMom knows its target market inside out and capitalizes on that knowledge as both a consumer and business-to-business marketer. The organization serves the needs of end users (moms) as well as the media community that wants to reach this target market (publishers and advertisers).

EverythingMom proves that sometimes, it’s quite possible to be everything to everybody. Or, at least, every mom.