HispanicBusiness

On 26 April, when Varun Duggirala changed his status on social networking site Facebook from 'being single' to 'in a relationship', his friends flooded his page with comments and 'likes'.

Within an hour, they received a notification--'Single is boring. Twosome is awesome', which also cajoled them to click on dieselturnstwo.com to claim discount coupons for an offline sale of fashion brand Diesel. Unknown to them, the notification was part of a viral campaign created by Duggirala's company, Glitch Media Pvt. Ltd, to promote the sale that marked Diesel's second anniversary in India.

The campaign resulted in 35,000 visits to the website within three hours of the activity.

"To make the anniversary sale viral, we developed a website where people could generate their own personalized discount coupon to claim their discounts. This site was then promoted though a digital flash mob," said Duggirala, co-founder of Glitch Media.

Earlier this year, L'Oreal India Pvt. Ltd launched its new cream BB through a digital campaign that trended on Twitter and got close to 6 million impressions within three hours.

The BB campaign saw the cosmetic products and hair care company, with brands including Maybelline, and Garnier, asked men to use the acronym WTF--short for "women take forever"--and post their views on its Facebook page.

Close to 40,000 men responded.

Experts note that as the interest level in digital campaigns has risen, so have the spends on social media campaigns and mobile apps. And though the spend on digital media remains a fraction of that on TV, advertisers are willing to pay for campaigns that are created solely for online channels, given the promise that India's 120 million plus Internet users, many of them young people, hold out.

According to the 2012 report on media and entertainment by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and KPMG, digital advertising in India is projected to grow to '1,990 crore from '1,540 crore in 2011 while the total advertising pie is estimated to swell to '82,300 crore in 2012 from '72,800 crore in 2011.

The report estimates digital advertising will expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 30% to '5,700 crore in 2018.

"Digital medium spends at the company are growing in triple digits as compared to overall advertising spends that are growing at 30% per annum," said Saryaki Gosh, head consumer product division, L'Oreal. He added that in the case of brands like Maybelline, digital medium spends account for 50% of the overall advertising budget.

The largest medium in the UK with more than 33% marketshare is digital, followed by TV and print, according to Mahesh Murthy, founder and chief executive, Pinstorm, a pay-for-performance digital marketing company.

"Digital is quite large in the US too, with a 18% share of revenues. It's still relatively small in India with around 6.5% share today, but Pinstorm expects that number to cross the 10% mark in the next two years," said Murthy.

Over the last 2-3 years, marketers have been viewing digital advertising as an important mix in their ad spends, according to Rohit Raj, co-founder of Glitch Media. "Spends have gone up by at least 25-30% in the last two years," he said.

According to industry estimates, digital campaigns and mobile application designing start from as low as '1-3 lakh and can go up to '10-20 lakh, depending on the level of complexity.