"I believe that the Indian online advertising today is worth about US$12 to 15 million. In 12 months' time, we aim to garner 10 per cent share of the market, said Mel Bohse, vice-president, Altavista Asia-Pacific.
MediaTurf offers services such as campaign planning, response-oriented communications and space buying for internet advertising. The agency is a joint-venture between Euro RSCG, venture capitalist eVentures and information technology company Microland Group.
AltaVista is working on its local indexes and content which would be mapped to its India specific domain www.in.altavista.com. The company is also considering introducing vernacular search services.
To increase traffic and facilitate instant search results, AltaVista is introducing its latest technology, Prisma, which instantly processes search queries and returns a wide variety of the most strongly associated words, phrases, names and concepts.
"We have six to eight virtual search centres on the home page and sponsored, key-word specific listings on the search result pages besides an area called the marketplace, which is quite different from regular portals and sites, said Bohse.
"The idea is to be prominent yet non-intrusive with the Indian site capable enough to handle the influx of traffic and commerce much like the other country-specific sites."
