Shekhar Sharma has joined Interaction, the digital arm of GroupM, as national director, search marketing.

Commenting on his role at Interaction, Sharma told agencyfaqs, “I will be involved in increasing the search business and bringing global search marketing practices to India, apart from planning and implementing search marketing campaigns.”

Interaction is forming a special team to provide search marketing solutions for the digital needs of GroupM agencies such as Mindshare, Maxus and Mediaedge:cia. According to Sharma, “Currently, advertisers are spending 30 per cent of their online advertising budget on search marketing and this is expected to reach 40-45 per cent by 2010.”

On another note, Mindshare has done some interesting viral work with Paanchvi Pass, they show that has not clicked with the audience – and the show that’s been called Paanchvi ‘Fail’ by the Big B’s ghost writer.