Google India, the internet search giant, is now looking at strengthening its display advertising

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business. The company is investing heavily on research and development on display and has also launched a marketing campaign to attract advertisers and publishers to use Google as a display advertising platform.

With 100 million educated upwardly modern young Indians online who can be the preferred target audience for many a brand, the company is looking at e platform as a lucrative business opportunity. Google India’s display business has grown 92 per cent last year and this year the company expects the figure to go even higher. Globally, display is now a $2.5bn business for Google.

“The idea was to reach out to those 100 million young Indians online who are not just restricting themselves to searching but spending more and more time on entertaining themselves and interacting with their friends through social media. Today with 8 per cent nternet penetration we have just stracted the surface. With more and more telecom players getting into the 3g and data wave, internet will definitely become the mainline medium,” said Kiran Mani, business head, Google India.

According to Mani, advertisers have already started taking the media seriously and the seriousness will grow with time. The FMCG players are the front runners which are being followed by auto brands and telecom brands. Among the recent instances where brands got onboard of display platform of Google are Airtel's YouTube contest to find India's biggest cricket fans, Nestle's YouTube promotion for Nescafe with Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, HUL’s sponsoring the release of the Bollywood movie Dabang on youtube. The company hopes the list will only grow with time.