Everything happens in dog years in dot com land. One Australian executive's three year trajectory from receptionist to online media advertising strategist proves the point.

Name: Lorraine Ng
Age: 28
Role: Online media strategist
Educational background: Psychology BA
Employment history: Initiative Media (Ammirati Puris Lintas), Euro, Zivo
Goal: To work in Hong Kong
Dream job: Media director for the Asia Pacific region.
Employer pre-requisites: Stable background, office in Hong Kong because it's the HO for most Asian companies.
Miscellaneous: Taught English in Tokyo, owns 120 pairs of shoes

Year 1

Lorraine Ng took a job as an ad agency receptionist with Initiative Media in order to get her foot in the advertising industry door.

"Boys start in the mail room and girls as secretaries and receptionists,' Ng says, "unless you're really well connected. I only ended up in media because that's where they had the receptionist's job".

She pushed for more responsibility and was made a media planning assistant after two months, "then they promoted the title to junior planner buyer and gave me more responsibility."

Ng starting working on Internet advertising under Liam Walsh who, with Nick Burrows, had been one of the first ad men in Australia to take clients online. She assisted Walsh in distilling client briefs for aims and target audiences and providing them to networks such as BMC, Doubleclick, Ozemail, Yahoo, Space and Real Media, relaying their selections of sites back to the client and in negotiating the purchase of advertising space online.

Year 2

An opportunity for an online planner buyer came up at Euro, another ad agency that had won 'Interactive Agency of the Year' two years running. "It was perfect for me because I wanted to stay focused completely on online media," Ng says. "I don't think it's possible to do both [print media and the Internet] because of the head hours necessary. The Internet is extremely time consuming and there is a lot to learn. There just isn't time if you're dealing with other mediums."

Ng was the sole Internet planner buyer for her group and says the experience was her greatest learning curve. "I had to stand completely on my own but I got to work with a really good range of clients."

During this time, Ng says her greatest challenges were negotiating with Dell Computers who demanded ROI based results, launching travel.com.au and overcoming cyberporn prejudice to launch adultshop.com with a clever brand recognition campaign.

Year 3

Ng's next move was to the web developer Zivo. "I wanted to go to a Web specialist," she says, "and to do strategy." When she heard about a position for an online media strategist, "I jumped onto it." She was instantly rewarded. "It was fantastic. I didn't have to justify what I was doing with the people I worked with." Instead of getting 10 minutes at the end of a presentation, "we were the whole presentation. And we had clients who were completely serious about the Internet, not just dipping their toe into it, with big budgets to spend," she says. She had found her milieu.

Ng says Zivo was one of the very best online agencies, with a staff of really talented people. She left the company a month before it closed.

Ng's final word: Internet advertising is a fast track career with better pay than conventional media. Why? "Because there are so many people who are scared of it," Ng says.

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.