Bellwether survey reports record adspend decline

The IPA’s latest Bellwether survey reveals that up to half of companies are planning to cut marketing budgets in 2009, which is the first time that initial annual budgets have been set lower than the previous year in the report’s nine year history.

UK advertising will be “no a place for the faint hearted” this year, with 45% of companies reporting marketing budget cuts compared with last year and just 20% planning an increase, according to the IPA.

The Bellwether report also found that marketing budgets took their biggest cut in nine years in the final quarter of 2008 – the fifth successive quarterly adspend decline by the companies in the survey.

Only 7% of companies reported an increase in budgeted marketing spend in Q4 2008, compared with 49% that said they would be cutting spend, which the report said signalled a “sharp acceleration in the overall rate of decline of marketing expenditure toward to end of last year”.

The IPA said the main media advertising budgets, including TV, radio and press were the hardest hit in the last three months of the year, though online budgets also suffered record cuts in the quarter despite seeing strong double-digit growth in recent years.

IPA’s president, Moray MacLennan, said: “This Bellwether report suggests that adland in 2009 will be no place for the faint-hearted. Confidence has plummeted and the data suggests a steep decline in GDP for the first quarter.”

IPA: 020 7235 7020 www.ipa.co.uk