Citing new research on its own base of 30 million social media users, ad services provider Lotame says that ad campaigns into user-generated content require much higher frequency caps in order to capture these users when they are ready to pay attention. Frequent visitors to blogs and network profile pages are so highly engaged in their posting and mailing activities during their first session they pay no attention to ads. During later sessions in a 24-hour cycle these same users are in a more passive mode that can respond well to the message. The company suggests media planners try to target the core influencers in a given social vertical but also hit them repeatedly, sometimes up to 17 times, with an ad.

In a survey of industry experts on the effects of the expected recession on media industries, our own partner Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni of University of Mississippi tells Mediapost not to be too surprised if new print books emerge. Fortune, Esquire and Entertainment Weekly all grew out of hard times, when a soft ad market lowered the barriers for entry. The Internet will continue to prosper, maybe more so, because frugal media buyers will be looking for digital’s more precise targeting and ROI. Low-cost social networking and word-of-mouth techniques online may see some of the best benefit from a downturn, some media mavens predict. But the rich will get richer, Forrester predicts. Cost-per-action media like search is bound to look even better under tighter budgets.

In another sign that Microsoft is dead serious about becoming a major player in the online ad industry, the Redmond company acquires ad yield management solution Rapt and fold it into its existing Atlas ad serving platform. Rapt offers pulbihser sales workflow solution that already counts among its clients CNet, Dow Jones, New York Times Company, Microsoft, and Expedia. Rapt’s product includes pricing analytics, inventory management and business intelligence. The next front in the online ad wars is technology, which providers have the best tools that help publishers and marketers go to the next level of targeting and monetization.

You can spin the latest figures from Avenue A|Razorfish in two different directions. The agency billed $735 billion last year, of which 39% went to vertical sites, 31% to search, 19% to portals and 11% to ad networks. SVP of global sales Jeff Lanctot says they are seeing more spending move away from portals and into the longer tail. They estimate portal CPMs increased only 7% last year, compared to vertical site CPMs growing 20% to 30%. In one sense this sounds good for magazine media, many of whom serve verticals or, wisely, are starting to aggregate smaller sites and blogs around their specialty. The bad news may be the sheer speed of fragmentation, however. Last year, Avenue A spent across 863 sites, which mushroomed this year to 1,832 different sites. While overall spending was up 36% in 2006, that larger pie was cut into more than twice as many pieces. The challenge for branded media is not just to make their content more digitally friendly, but to recapture highly diffused spending. The second part of the equation may prove trickier and more costly than the first. The full Aveneu A| Razorfish outlook is available here and Jeff Lanctot’s blog is here.