Microsoft and Yahoo were among the first to set up .in (India-specific website) versions of their global websites. Since then, almost all other major global players like Google,AOL, and Reuters have follow-ed suit with their local versions — the latest one being YouTube.

Local versions satisfy the demand for local content since surfers, interested in India-specific content, need not navigate through a global mix. Publishers, too, benefit from more online advertising. Indian online advertising stood at Rs 215 crore in 2007, which is estimated to touch Rs 2,500 crore by 2011. Certainly, the local and regional portals will accelerate the online advertising growth.

As the content becomes relevant, local portals are expected to draw more visitors as users get hooked on to relevant content for a longer time which, in turn, generates good returns for advertisers, note observers. Krishna Prasad, executive producer of MSN India, notes: "In India, the Internet audience is hungry for content and free content in particular.

However, Internet users in the US and UK are more open to subscription-based and premium content. So it's even more important for us to leverage on display and search-based ads for content in India." Gopal Krishna, head of audience, Yahoo! India, corroborates: "Locally-relevant content always attracts more relevant audiences across India and more users always excite advertisers." So feels Krish Seshadri, senior director, Programming and Product Marketing, AOL India.

Mahesh Murthy, CEO, Pinstorm, a Mumbai-based search engine marketing (SEM) company, has a different take though: "TLDs (top level domains, like .in) will definitely benefit publishers as they attract more audience, but in terms of advertising it becomes a little complex as ads pop up according to IP address (the ads which pop up at local sites will pop up at the global sites as well).

Thus, it makes no big difference. But it will give advertisers extra options." Viveka Bhargava, MD, Communicate2, another Mumbai-based SEM company, says: "More SMEs (small and medium enterprises) will explore the medium now as the content becomes local. When MSN launched msn.co.in with more relevant traffic, the cost per clicks just increased." MSN is a client of Communicate2.

Analysts, too, feel the same. Jaideep Ghosh, director, KPMG Advisory Service, agrees that it would simply open the online space to a larger potential user group. There is good scope to leverage regional language capabilities also, he notes.

Findings across 10 largest regional bases reveal that 80 per cent of Indians are comfortable with regional languages. Not a single newspaper or TV channel of the most-sold and -watched channels in India is in English. So will be the case with portals, predict analysts. Though regional portal are still in infancy, they will outdo local portals in future.

Regional language portals promise more for SMEs from the advertising point of view as compared to local portals, as regional portals have more specific audience. But the idea hasn't caught up advertisers' fancy yet due to several reasons. Pankaj Jain, president and COO of Webdunia, notes that clicks increase if the ad is in Hindi or regional language. But most of the ads on regional portals are still in English.

Regional language ads comprise only 5-7 per cent of the online ad space on regional portals." To make an ad in Hindi or any other language, advertisers need to go the extra mile.

Regional language keyboards and Unicode technology (with which all Indian language portals can be accessed on any computer without downloading the language fonts), and the input or key-in mechanism should only make things better and advertisers will be able to reap more benefits.