NEWS17 July 2014
UK — The Q2 2014 IPA Bellwether Report has revealed that marketing budgets have been revised up for a seventh successive quarter.
Source: IPA
The quarterly report, now in its 14th year, revealed a net balance of +15.2% of companies registering an increase in budgets during Q2 2014 which, despite being lower than the Q1 2014 record of +20.4%, is the second highest reading recorded in the survey’s history.
This rise was reflected, to varying degrees, across all categories except market research, which recorded a -2.4% downward revision to budgets.
Denise Turner, managing partner and chief insight officer at Havas Media believes this reflects the natural pattern of investment: “Market research is a vital tool in the marketing director’s armoury, giving them the confidence to make those big decisions about increased marketing investment,” she said. “As such the investment in market research often comes before the increase in investment.
“We are seeing a sustained increase in advertising investment, no doubt as a result of previous investment in research. It is pleasing to see that investment in market research is remaining relatively steady over time.”
The report outlines that the ongoing upward trend in marketing budgets reflects companies’ continued optimism regarding their own and wider industry financial prospects: the report data showed the net balance of companies indicating growing optimism with regard to their company’s financial prospects was at +37.5%. The figure for wider industry optimism was at +33.0%.
With regard to actual spend, the final data for the 2013/14 financial year showed that a net balance of +19.9% of companies had registered an increase in marketing budgets: the highest percentage since 2004/5.
Full results can be found on the IPA website.
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3 Comments
Eoghan
10 years ago
Does this reflect a lack of trust in research and wanting to spend elsewhere? Or rather the falling costs of research - the move towards DIY and automated data collection solutions and passive/social data, not to mention the furthering decline of whatever telephone and F2F research still exists? I would suspect that clients are not necessarily doing less research - they are just (rightly) expecting their money to go a lot further with cheaper solutions encroaching on clunkier methods.
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S.A.D. Bellwether
10 years ago
The MR industry really needs to pull up its socks and take stock of how increasingly irrelevant it is becoming (or perceived to be) This is in fact a worse death-knell than negative publicity. as they say indifference is far worse than hatred. The ad industry in America responded to negative publicity and criticism (thanks to Ralph Nader and ilk) in the 70s with... yes, with an ad campaign aimed at the public. Even though the criticism had limited currency, and budgets had not declined. I have rarely seen this discussed seriously at any industry forum, so even a planned response is too ambitious, it is almost like life is perfectly normal and we can continue living with this threat hanging over our heads. There'd be some gathering at a high tea ceremony where a handful of guys'd discuss it (and this'd get reported in research live). Some leaders'd write articles exhorting and urging an industry response - but little happens beyond that. Perhaps its not the negative publicity, or criticism or even declining budgets - its the sheer indifference of the leading industry bodies (which only serve as bureaucratic or sometimes merely event managers) - which should help nail the coffin, in every direction!!! Can your periodical make a difference?
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Beatrix
10 years ago
c'est ne pas une pipe? Really you dont need to be a market researcher to interpret the numbers any differently? The message is unequivocally loud and clear. Either we can completely ignore it or obfuscate it by wondering what it really means. (D'oh!)
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