The number of UK marketers who upped their online spend in Q4 fell to a nine-year low, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising‘s (IPA) latest Bellwether survey says.
Markit chief economist Chris Williamson, who carried out the survey, told paidContent:UK 21 percent of firms had cut online ad spend in the quarter while 14 percent increased it. That means the number of marketers increasing online spend stood at minus seven percent on balance. The internet is still outperforming other media – that retraction was the smallest of any medium, but still a record reduction for online since IPA began the survey nine years ago. The figures don’t correlate to a fall in internet ad spend itself.
Overall marketing budgets across the media were trimmed by about 35 percent in the quarter. IPA said 49 percent of companies reduced overall marketing spend in ’08, just seven percent increased. Looking ahead, 45 percent of companies will spend less in ’09, 20 percent will spend more.