It was a quarter for the ages at iVillage (NASDAQ:IVIL). The company that bills its popular portal as "The Internet for Women" saw fourth-quarter earnings quadruple to $0.12 a share on a 65% surge in revenues.

Even though the $0.12-per-share showing matched analyst expectations, it was twice as much as the company had earned over the past eight quarters combined. Going that far back would take you to when iVillage broke through the proverbial dot-com glass ceiling and became a profitable content provider.

The company has been the beneficiary of the popularity of contextual advertising on high-traffic content sites. iVillage certainly qualifies on that front: It drew an average of 362 million monthly page views this past quarter.

In 2006, iVillage is looking to grow revenues by 15% to 24%. If the niche content giant doesn't dilute its stock much more than the 77.4 million shares currently outstanding, earnings should come in between $0.18 and $0.24 a share.

Just as Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendation CNET Networks (NASDAQ:CNET) has been ramping up its multimedia offerings, iVillage is also committed to beefing up its video and audio features. Why? It's likely the result of wider access to broadband, as well as the ability to set itself apart from most sites that don't have the financial backing to producing quality streamed content.

This matters because iVillage keeps reaching deeper into the feminine experience. It has recently emphasized health, pregnancy, and parenting issues as a way to drum up more of the big spending sponsors that toil in those areas.

Sure, one can also say that it's being done for the sake of brand ambassadorship. Working with CBS (NYSE:CBS) for a radio series, as well as having the wherewithal to license content to Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) MSN.com site, aren't things any startup can achieve.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, iVillage also is doing a better job of keeping its visitors on the site unless a more lucrative paid-search opportunity from its inventory of contextual ads from Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) beckons. One initiative that bears watching is the company's effort to promote the search functionality on the site itself. With so many intertwined online properties at its disposal, taking the vertical approach to drawing and attracting visitors is a sound strategy.

iVillage is humming along just fine at the moment. Even if it manages to hit only the low end of its net income targets, it will still earn more this year than in the two previous years combined. Yes, that includes the $0.12-per-share monster quarter that the company just achieved. It's kind of making the glass ceiling look more like a glass table in the basement these days.

Microsoft is a Motley Fool Inside Value selection.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz loves women so much that he married one. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.