Mixed Bag Of Ups And Downs For UK Marketing Budgets

According to a new survey I came across today, UK marketers seem to be diverging in their opinion on advertising spending, with roughly the same proportion of businesses hiking and reducing their marketing budgets in the second quarter of the year.

The latest survey from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising(IPA) and research firm Markit, which polled 300 major UK companies, shows that 22% increased their spending, while 23% dropped it.

Trends are just as varied across different media. While the net difference between the number of firms choosing to increase spending and those doing the exact opposite in terms of traditional media came in at -1.7%, Internet spending as a whole stood at 5.1%. Similarly, direct media saw a difference of -1.1%, whereas sales promotion scored 4.5%.

Overall, 18% of those polled remained highly optimistic for their industry in the months to come, compared to 26% in the previous quarter.Around one in three have negative expectations about the market activity in their own sector, whereas the previous three-month period saw a quarter of the panel share this view.

With the latest results in mind the authors of the survey say the outlook for the year as a whole is uncertain. According to Chris Williamson, Markit’s chief economist, marketers employed a risk aversion strategy in the second quarter, which led to more moderate spending.