Hundreds of millions may be slashed from ad budgets, and the nation's biggest advertiser lost its CMO. Step inside and follow the money.

Here's a little math quiz. What do you get when you add No.1, No. 4 and No. 22? If you answered $9.4 billion in total ad spending, you've clearly been reading the news this week because that's the approximate sum reached when you combine the 2007 total ad spends of Procter & Gamble, General Motors and Anheuser-Busch, according to Ad Age's statistics.

But if you haven't been reading the news, you may have missed the fact that each brand had a serious shakeup that may alter the way it spends advertising dollars.

This Bud's for you
In what amounts to a $50 billion deal, Anheuser-Busch has agreed to be acquired by Belgium-based brewer InBev.

While it's not clear precisely how the takeover, which began on poor terms, will play out, there are two big issues facing the brewer. First, InBev will need to find some way to address the uncomfortable merger of foreign ownership and uber-patriotic messaging.

Second, InBev has been known to take an active role in the advertising and marketing operations of the companies it acquires. So far, no one has said anything about what InBev will do with A-B's ad budget, but already there are reports that DDB, A-B's lead agency, is readying itself for changes that could include cutbacks.

But does that mean A-B, which has been a stalwart of traditional advertising, is likely to look for greater efficiency by turning to digital? That's certainly the hope of Aaron Shapiro, a partner at interactive agency HUGE.

"Consumers are making more and more purchasing decisions on the web, even if they end up doing the actual purchase in a physical store," Shapiro says, adding that brands like JetBlue and IKEA -- two companies that work with HUGE -- are turning to the web more and more to disseminate their messages.

But before interactive agencies crack open a case of Bud, there's some chilling news from PaidContent.org, which is pointing out that A-B spent a paltry $3.9 million on digital last year. Although A-B certainly took a chance on digital with its Bud.TV experiment, the failure of that campaign may not garner much support for a sequel.

Drive by
A slumping U.S. economy and high fuel prices haven't helped General Motors. Although the company pledged to devote nearly half of its advertising budget to digital earlier this year, the total spend is likely to be a lot smaller on news that the automaker plans to cut its marketing budget.

GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner declined to give specifics on the cuts, but GM, which spent $3 billion last year on advertising, has been trimming its messaging operations each year since 2005. However, the cost-cutting probably means more to fret about for those on the other side of advertising's digital divide, according to John Grudnowski, VP of modern media at the space150 advertising agency. 

"GM still needs to sell cars, and they will measure growth associated with this shift," Grudnowski says. "This learning will be the silver lining in a bad economic situation for marketers at GM. They'll come out the other side more effective."

That's a sentiment shared by Ken Graffeo, COO of PointRoll, who says that automotive marketers in particular are likely to avail themselves of digital because they are under enormous pressure to run highly accountable campaigns.

Going out on top
When you're the CMO for the nation's largest advertiser and you win "Advertiser of the Year" honors at the International Advertising Festival, there isn't much more you can hope to accomplish, which is likely why Procter & Gamble's CMO Jim Stengel announced that he would be stepping down Oct. 31.

What Stengel will do next is anyone's guess. Beginning Aug. 1, Stengel will start work on what P&G called "special projects." The company declined to give any additional information.

Marc Pritchard, currently president of strategy, productivity and growth, will take over for Stengel. Thereafter, it will be for Pritchard to answer the enduring question all agencies ask of their brand clients: How does P&G plan to spend its $5.2 billion marketing budget?

Michael Estrin is deputy editor at iMediaConnection.