Global press marketing budgets continue steady decline

Printed marketing spend declined globally again in August while digital budget allocations recorded rapid growth, new figures reveal.

The Global Marketing Index (GMI), published by data provider Warc, provides indicator figures collected from a monthly survey on trends and confidence in global marketing.

The latest data, collected in the first two weeks of August, showed press marketing budgets declined further with a value of 34.1 while television and out of home marketing budgets scored values of 46.2 and 44.7 respectively.

In contrast spend on digital grew rapidly with a score of 74.4 followed by mobile marketing budget growth at 69.2.

A GMI reading of 50 indicates a stable environment and no change while figures over 60 or below 40 indicate rapid growth or decline respectively.

Launched in October 2011 the GMI surveys a ‘panel’ of 1,225 contributors, across the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe, who work in organisations such as brand and media owners and creative agencies.

The survey asks whether staffing levels and average media, marketing and promotional budgets are increasing, unchanged or reducing and whether respondents feel their trading conditions are improving, stable or deteriorating.

The report reveals overall global marketing budgets decreased by 1.4 points to 46.1 since July, bringing them to their lowest level this year, although trading conditions were perceived to have shown a global improvement while staffing levels rose in all regions.

Marketing budgets in Asia Pacific tumbled dropping 4.7 points to 46 while uncertainty across the Eurozone was reflected in a score of 40.9, just 0.1 points higher than its lowest point in December 2011.

Conversely marketers across the Americas showed growth and increased their budgets causing the GMI to record an increase of 1.2 points to 53.5.

Warc data editor Suzy Young said it would be interesting to see if the sudden dip in Asia Pacific represented a more deep-rooted downturn.

She added: "I think the rest of the results we have seen are unsurprising and reflect the confidence levels experienced by businesses in their global regions. I expect the trend we are seeing with press and digital decline and growth will continue."