But to create brands and coax people into buying stuff they weren’t scouring for is a different proposition. When Google bought YouTube for more than 100 times its 2006 earnings, the search giant was banking on unleashing a mighty new revenue stream by placing ads next to videos and giving a percentage of the profits (rumoured to be 30%) to the content creators. A challenge is already being mounted by two US TV networks, General Electric’s NBC Universal and News Corporation’s Fox, set to launch this summer. A new platform will offer nearly all the networks’ shows across a multiplicity of sites including AOL, Yahoo, MSN and News Corporation’s MySpace. This site will reach 96% of the US online audience, making it, in the words of News Corporation president Peter Chernin, “the largest advertising platform on earth”.

The site will be free to view, apart from movies, and the new venture has already signed up big advertisers including General Motors, Cadbury Schweppes and Intel. The media has speculated that the so-called “NewTube” will keep 90% of ad revenues, with distributors receiving 10%.

While the jury is out on YouTube and its imitators, media buyers also indicate that marketers are beginning to look beyond traditional journalism sites – a concern to many newspapers that have invested heavily online – realising that many news and gossip hunters are increasingly promiscuous. “Advertisers are getting less scared of blogs and newsgroups and are now beginning to take money away from the traditional newspapers’ sites,” says Greg Smith, chief operating officer of New York-based Neo@ Ogilvy, an interactive ad agency owned by Ogilvy & Mather.

Advertisers are also having to be, well, more creative. Many companies are experimenting with viral marketing, distributed using social networks or by friends, family and colleagues who e-mail the promotion to one another. London-based Maverick Media specialises in producing short, funny video clips for companies targeting consumers aged 18-30. Its customers include Microsoft, car companies such as Renault and Mazda and several computer game firms. An advantage of viral ads is that they are more risqué than TV commercials. One Maverick video, for the Renault Mégane, shows a racing driver who crashes because he is distracted by a glamorous babe. The message suited the young men Renault is trying to attract, and the ad has been watched by more than 800,000 internet users, but it might have put off TV viewers.

There is a flipside: in 2004, Ogilvy & Mather famously distributed a viral video ad for the Ford Ka in which a pet cat was beheaded by the car’s convertible roof. Traditional media and animal charities criticised the ad, and Ford pulled it amid a flurry of bad publicity. The video is still delighting unsqueamish YouTube viewers, however.

Meanwhile, other youth-chasing companies such as Nintendo are reaching consumers in France and Germany via blogs and viral games that provide marketing departments with detailed, auditable statistics.

Peter Hayden, director of production at Tribal DDB, which won at both the IPA Effectiveness Awards and the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival last year, says the internet is making the advertising industry creative in several different ways. “Before, a good marketing campaign could persuade people to buy,” he explains. “In the internet age, potential consumers can instantly seek verification for all your claims and make on-the-spot price comparisons. Social networking sites might make it easier to reach your demographic target group, but it is harder to target a message at them. Your brand has to stand up to scrutiny.”

Hayden says there are essentially three ways to sell something online: through sex, humour or “coolness”. “One of our best online campaigns was the ‘Bodygroom’ project we worked on for Philips, which was funny and got people talking about it,” he recalls (the website address, www.shaveeverywhere.com, offers a clue to the ad’s nature). “There are many things that would not work in old media – it’s about the interaction and getting a good feeling. Online ads are not just there to push a message. You need to get interaction with the consumer. They need to be taken on a journey to create a brand experience. You have to be persuasive in a credible way.”

Insurance might not be sexy, but Tribal has made it humorous. In its cross-media campaign for Achmea Group, the Netherlands’ biggest insurance company, Tribal encouraged viewers of its TV ads, in which someone in a witness protection programme is feted as his new town’s millionth inhabitant, to play an online game in which they assumed the identity of the hapless character.

The campaign became so popular that the insurance company saw double-digit growth. “That wouldn’t have worked in old media and it wouldn’t have worked simply by the company’s name popping up on a search engine,” says Hayden. “Advertising should be fun, right?”