Warc’s Global Marketing Index (GMI) found that marketing budgets were up from 52.9 in April to 54.3 reaching its highest value since the index began in October 2011.

The Americas reflected this confidence with the index rising 3.2 points to 58.0 – the highest regional figure for marketing budgets recorded so far – with Asia Pacific showing the same rise in confidence at 53.8.

However, confidence has dropped in Europe with the index slipping back at 49.7.

Meanwhile, the headline GMI measure – which takes into account marketers’ expectations for trading conditions, staffing levels and marketing budgets – saw no change from April registering a global value of 56.5

Region by region, the headline GMI registered 58.6 for the Americas, 56.7 for Asia Pacific and 53.2 for Europe.

The index of global trading conditions, the second component of headline GMI, continued to perform strongly in May, registering a value of 59.1 globally – identical to April’s result.

Regional index values stand at 60.8 for the Americas, 59.9 for Asia Pacific and 56.1 for Europe.

The index of staffing levels remains positive, at 56.0 globally with regional index values standing at 56.9 for the Americas, 53.7 for Europe and 56.4 for Asia Pacific.

Suzy Young, data and journals director at Warc, said: “Global marketing budgets have been raised for a fifth consecutive month but, while budgets show growth in all global regions, European marketers are slightly less optimistic than they were in April. It will be interesting to see whether this trend continues next month.”