As compared to the US elections, the 15th general elections in India have been a watershed. As Narasimha Jayakumar, Business Head, Google India, puts it, ?It can be termed as India?s first digital elections. The internet has been a substantive part of the parties? strategy during this election. Parties are using social networking sites, mobile devices, YouTube etc to reach out to young voters.?

The online user base increased to 45.3 million by September 2008 as per the latest Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) report ? 42 million are urban and the remaining 3.3 million rural. With India having millions of online users, it?s creating an increasing demand for digital advertising.

A recent survey by Centre for Media Studies estimates that a whopping $2 billion was spent during the ongoing general election. The amount is even higher than the $1.8 billion spent in the world?s most speculated event ? the 2008-09 US presidential elections. Also, the amount is twice the amount spent in the last Lok Sabha polls, Rs 4,500 crore. Political parties have been innovative in reaching out to the voters. ?In addition to text ads, banner ads, video ads have also been deployed,? says Jayakumar. He further informs, ?Of the general elections and the IPL, both have been pretty substantive but the elections is a larger episodic activity.?

According to industry experts, the annual online ad spend being Rs 600-700 crore, the general elections and the IPL have a huge budget to lure visitors online. ?The general elections and the IPL have budgets of Rs 50 crore each. While off line ads have come down because of the slowdown, it?s boom time for the online ads. Also, it?s one tenth of what the advertiser spends off line. The return on investment for us is thus high online,? says Vivek Pahwa, CEO,

Accentium, an online group of portals such as Secondshaadi.com, Gaadi.com and AdLift.com.

Both the leading political parties have professional volunteers running the show. To reach out to a large section of voters, the Congress and the BJP, are using Google?s technologies, AdWords and AdSense, with accessibility to more than 30,000 websites and blogs. BJP?s site, http://www.lkadvani.in, has attracted over 1,300 volunteers pan India, according to news reports.

Online advertising being a relatively cheaper option , online advertising found favour with political parties this time. Election-related websites also seem to have grabbed the attention of many non-resident Indians (NRIs) who are getting involved and even funding websites. Websites such as engagevoter.com, indiagoes2vote.com have NRI participation at multiple levels.

A bevy of entrepreneurial firms ? from Google, the world?s most valuable online advertising agency disguised as a web-search engine, to Affle, mobile marketing player (of SMS 2.0), to Accentium, an online group, are now selling advertisers new tools for the two IPLs ? Indian Political League and Indian Premier League.

While Google is working with many political parties including the BJP and the Congress among others, Accentium is handling only the BJP. ?Communist Party of India has a YouTube channel and so does the Election Commission. Several independent parties have leveraged the Google platform to reach out to their voters. While we cannot share exact numbers, the campaigns have delivered well and they have formed a substantive part of their election strategy,? says Jayakumar.

IPL and beyond

IPLT20.com has also launched a social network for the fans. For instance, it has spruced up the ad revenues for the months April-May. Says Anuj Kumar, Executive Director, South-Asia, Affle, ?The IPL has broken the formula season of ads that is around October, the Diwali season. We have seen the ad revenue rise as well as interactivity. For the IPL, the click-through rate has crossed 10%. The number of advertisers leveraging through the IPL has gone up from four in IPL season 1 to around 15 this time, resulting in 30% more revenue,? adds Kumar.

In the prevalent traditional media, as per TAM AdEx, a division of TAM Media Research, there has been a rise in the ad volumes in tv and radio during March-April, 2009 than January-February, 2009, while radio saw a decline.

It is premature to say which party will win, but business houses and web portals will definitely yield sizeable profits.

Space marketing

• Digital, comprising internet and mobile, continues to be the fastest growing medium in India. In 2008, this medium grew by 74% to Rs 680 crore. Digital medium will be much less-affected by the economic slowdown than other media

• The digital medium offers measurability and better RoI for advertisers

• Advertising networks have come up in the digital space in the last 2-3 years

• As per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India?s report, broadband subscribers increased to 5.85 million by February 2009

• Communities and blogs continue to be popular especially amongst the youth. Advertisers are also seeking these to connect with consumers, the recent example being the general elections

Source: GroupM Media Forecast, April 2009