ChasNote

Among yesterday’s coverage of FM’s Series C financing was this post by Avenue A’s SVP for global media Jeff Lanctot, including his take on working with FM.

“I can say that FM has established a nice track record with Avenue A | Razorfish (my employer) over the last several quarters. Looking back to 2007, we spent nearly 4X more with FM in the second half of the year than we did in the first half. In the first quarter of 2008, our spend with FM matched all of calendar year 2007. Granted, FM started from a small base in 2007, but this kind of growth isn’t common. Looking at the reasons for their success, I think FM has done three things very well:

“1. They are clear about what they do. They don’t pretend to be an ad network. In this interview with Rafat, John says “We don’t view ourselves as an ad network…ad networks are our cousins. We have a portfolio of brands that we represent and partner with, so we consider ourselves a digital media and publishing company. Our next phase is to help those brands grow.” That’s smart positioning, because I don’t think there is room for many more ad networks.

“2. They treat every campaign as a unique opportunity. The FM team is quite genuine about providing custom solutions that work for readers, authors and advertisers. This tends to be a labor-intensive approach, so I’m not sure how well it scales. But marketers love thoughtful, integrated, on-brand ideas. FM has lots of them.”

You’ll have to visit Jeff’s site to get his third point.

Disclosure: Jeff is a pal, a client and — now more than ever — a handsome and powerful man.

Avenue A’s senior VP for global media isn’t worried about Microsoft buying Yahoo. Or, as the Silicon Alley Insider headline puts it, “Microsoft + Yahoo = Irrelevant.”

“”There’s a perspective that going from three portals to two is bad for buyers. But spend is actually moving away from portals and much more broadly across the web, so I’m actually not concerned about moving from three to two, because we are really moving from 3 to 800.”

More at Ad Age:

“For the first time in the past four years, portals lost share of ad dollars year over year — at least from Avenue A/Razorfish, which releases its latest Digital Outlook report today. The shift comes after years of ad-dollar consolidation with the largest players online. In 2007, 19% of Avenue A’s media spending went to portals, down from 24% in 2006.”

Waiting for the crew at Farley’s to brew up a cup of tea this afternoon, I flipped through the print edition of AdWeek for the first time in about a decade, and two stories caught my attention, both reminders that size still matters in publishing.

First, Starcom USA Unveils New Print Accountability Tool: The agency “has been doing bigger deal in print but with fewer magazines” in order to get a better read on the performance of campaigns, creative messages and publications. If other agencies are doing the same, it means the financial pain across the print-publishing landscape will be felt more acutely at niche magazines.

Second, Will a Free WSJ.com Pay Off for Murdoch?:

“‘Because of the their model,’ said Jeff Lanctot, svp, global media at Avenue A/Razorfish, ‘they are a smaller property.’ That by nature, can sell only so many ads. Consider that Yahoo Finance generated 470 million page views in October, versus 11 million for WSJ.com, per comScore. ‘They could instantly become a more attractive property’ if the site goes free, Lanctot added.”

Niche publications are great for advertisers in terms of targeting and audience composition, but without scale to go along with quality small publishers may not get a seat at the table.