Durgesh Gupta - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Miniclip is a gaming website, popular more with younger children. Yet, if you go to a kiddie's game, you could find a big ad on it for the BJP, saying it's the greenest Indian political party and with a picture of L K Advani. It also serves as a link to Advani's home page.

The general election this time has seen political parties attempting to reach out in novel ways to every possible audience with portals like Miniclip, we assume the belief is that children can influence their parents.

Political parties are also using technologies like search tools and contextual advertising to insert ads across website categories, from cricket and travel sites to auto, retail and foreign sites.

If a website mentions women's issues, a political party's link talking about their policies for women could pop up as an ad link. If the website is about children's education, then the education policy link could pop up.

In Miniclip, you will not find the BJP ad in all games. And even the ads may vary depending on the game you open. Though we couldn't understand why the 'green' ad should appear on Starship Eleven or why there's no ad on Monster Trucks Nitro; maybe the software is yet to be perfected.

Ignitee Digital Solutions has taken "Jai Ho" campaign of Congress party to social media. One of the key properties that the agency thought would be a perfect fit was YouTube. Ignitee then strategically went about using various social networks such as Orkut, Facebook & Rediff iShare.

Atul Hegde, chief executive officer, Ignitee, says, “Our focus was to launch the Congress digital campaign in the social media space. This method of campaigning is very effective as it facilitates in engaging the users. We have received a phenomenal response of more than 50,000 views in less then a week's time and going forward we expect this ratio to rise further."

Even The New York Times website has video links to L K Advani's site, presumably to draw NRI funds, and there are Congress video posts on YouTube.

"We are working with Congress, BJP and other regional parties to help them reach out to the 2.5 crore netizens. When a person searches for information on a particular issue, then links to a party's blog or sites come up as ads," says Narasimha Jayakumar, business head, Google India.

Google works with a network of more than 30,000 third-party sites. These strategies are helping to increase viewers for party websites. "Initially, party sites saw some 100 visitors, which has gone up to 40,000 to 50,000 viewers a day. Even the youth want to participate in the elections and voice opinions," says Jayakumar.

A spokesperson for Dhyeya Technologies, which is maintaining the BSP website, says the number of visitors in the past two weeks has gone up by 10,000. "Viewers are downloading photos, articles and other information to add on their blogs," he says.

Even tier-II and -III towns are seen to be driving traffic to political party sites. Some have started microsites for the elections. These pages provide information on candidates, constituencies, blogging space, participation in debates and opinion polls.

"There is a need to create more informed and involved users. On these sites, the users take part in discussions and debates with leaders and get a more comparative analysis," says Gopal Krishna, acting country head, Yahoo! India.