Rising input costs, increased competition and the need to rise above the din is increasingly prompting marketing executives to expose their brands to the online and mobile screens.

These spaces hold promise. Digital display ad spends in India range between Rs 300 crore and Rs 350 crore; search ad spends between Rs 150 and Rs 200 crore; and mobile ad spends between Rs 50 crore and Rs 80 crore, according to Leroy Alvares, country head of Tribal DDB India (digital arm of Mudra).

The online advertising market is expected to increase at least 10 times by 2011 to touch Rs 2,500 crore from today's figure of around Rs 250 crore. Spending on the mobile market, currently estimated to be around Rs 40 crore, is expected to touch Rs 500 crore in the next five years.

The brands range from two- and four-wheeler firms to those manufacturing consumer durables. For instance, Maruti, Tata Motors and Fiat have been advertising their products online.

"High-end products like cars have a big presence on the internet. Since cars are not mass market products, it makes sense to advertise to the specific audience, confirms Farokh Balsar, National Sector Leader, Media and Entertainment, Ernst & Young.

However, it's the FMCG (mass market segment) spends that have grown fastest when it comes to online marketing, according to Prasanth Mohanachandran, executive director — Digital Services, OgilvyOne Worldwide (digital branch of O&M), India.

FMCG firms spend considerable sums on microsites these days. Most television commercials (TVCs) are supplemented with a parallel campaign online in the shape of microsites. Examples include that of Sunsilk, Mentos, Pepsi, Ponds, Happydent, 7up, Cadbury and Kwality Walls. Microsites have a short life span and a simple interactive site can cost around Rs 2.5 lakh.

This also means good recurring business for agencies. All these activities are considered hot, prompting all the top 10 traditional ad agencies in India to either raise their own digital arms or look to acquire independent internet ad agencies.

Meanwhile, blog posts too are making their way into the digital marketing strategies. For instance, there are online biking communities like xBhp.com (supported by Castrol), Biking the World and Motorcycle Diaries which garner huge traffic.

TVS and Hero Honda created websites for Apache and CBZ Extreme. Apache rolled out Apache Tribe community around its fans. Advertisers believe reading positive blog reviews from users on products have more impact on a prospective buyer than a TVC.

Pulsar, CBZ and Apache have communities on Orkut. The Pulsar communities command more than 10,000 members. The move is inspired by the MySpace phenomenon when in 2006, X-Man 3's ad buy on MySpace to support its release garnered 3.2 million friends on its profile. Nike Soccer (43,000 friends), Honda Element (43,159 friends), Aquafina (16,302 friends) are other cases in point.

Gaming is the smartest part of this vital marketing strategy where the product integration is not apparent and the entire activity seems geared to entertain. Gillette is promoting its gaming website gillettewinners.com through radio channels where users can play games with their brand ambassadors.

Nokia has a technoholic contest on its microsite. Clinic All Clear's MakeYourMoves.com is like a virtual flirting game where one can choose between moves (on the opposite sex) and watch the outcome of their choices in a pre-recorded video window. In just five days after launch, the site had received 5,000 registrations, 200,000 user sessions of 18 minutes each and 1.4 million page views.