• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 15, 2005

One of the more dramatic moments of Ad:Tech in Chicago this week came when Susan Bratton, chair of the Ad:Tech advisory board and CEO of Cendara, Inc., interviewed a panel of marketing officers Tuesday morning.

After spending the better part of an hour lobbing softball questions at the panelists -- E-Loan's Catherine Muriel, Purina's Mike Moore, Kimpton Hotels' Steve Pinetti, and Motorola's Benjamin Hill -- Bratton asked how much their companies spent annually on interactive marketing.

After a moment of stunned silence -- on the part of the audience as well as the panelists -- Muriel was the only one to cough up a dollar figure, of sorts: "More than 20 and less than 50," said E-Loan's chief marketing officer.

Motorola's Hill said the interactive marketing budget was between 3 and 10 percent of the total marketing budget, but that was including promotions, viral campaigns and Web site development.

Moore offered that his group at Purina accounts for 5 to 7 percent of the total media budget, but then added that the amount spent in interactive marketing was closer to 20 to 25 percent, including agency fees and Web sites.

Considering that search engine optimization requires ongoing updating of Web sites, it makes sense that companies would spend money on their sites -- and on agencies, including search agencies, that have expertise with search engines.

But the answers coming from executives at Motorola and Purina -- specifically, their separation of media spending from online marketing in general -- also indicate that pronouncements about shifting marketing budgets from TV to the Web have no easily discernible meaning.