Not long ago, one of the biggest software companies in the US decided it wanted to take the plunge into the digital world and spend a much larger part of its budget on online advertising.

The process quickly ran into a problem. Once people clicked on the search results or the online banner ads, they were directed to a website. The snag was that there was no money to create new content for this site; most of the software company's budget had been spent on a snazzy, 30-second television advertisement which would not hold the interest of web users for long.