Unquestionably a consumer that searches for “can I refinance my California home under new FHA loan program” makes a great advertising buy and probably a pretty hot mortgage lead. And major buys on primary destination portals like Yahoo! and MSN bring significant lead volume.

But are there opportunities outside of this very competitive market?

Recent investments in ad networks that target a bit differently, like this deal involving Glam Media and Adconion Media Group, demonstrate an emerging trend:

Such networks, which sell ads that appear on an array of other Web sites and sometimes their own sites, have gained traction in recent years with advertisers looking to reach groups of consumers beyond the main portal properties such as Yahoo or MSN.

Many advertisers are looking for high performing values as their budgets get tighter. The challenge is that many of these high performing values are scattered about on a myriad of high quality web sites and blogs that attract a very targeted client with enormous loyalty.

Notable ad networks that are offering these targeted and loyal consumers include examples like gawker.com, Intermarkets (Drudge Report), and ActiveRain.com

And even beyond innovative ad networks are the individuals that are talking to a loyal base of mortgage consumers like BlownMortgage.com, TheMortgageReports.com, and MortgageOnlineBlog.com.

It just seems natural that as advertising and marketing budgets shrink advertisers will look for more focused and potentially higher performing value in these niche advertising venues. The questions becomes who will step in to help aggregate and manage these opportunities to maximize the opportunity?