Julie Roehm has more than $2 billion to spend this year, and the way she’s been spending it worries executives at News Corp., the Washington Post Co., and virtually every other media company on the planet. As Chrysler’s director of marketing communications, Roehm, 34, oversees a budget that Advertising Age ranks as the sixth-largest pool of ad dollars in the nation. . . .
Roehm rarely misses a chance to talk about how delighted she is with online advertising. Last year she spent 10% of the budget online; this year she is allotting closer to 18%; next year, she says, she will allocate more than 20%. Do the math: In 2006 roughly $400 million of Chrysler’s money that used to go into TV, newspaper, and magazine ads will be spent on the Internet. Says Roehm: “I hate to sound like such a marketing geek, but we like to fish where the fish are.”
Something’s happening here.