Marketing Budgets up Globally, But Challenges Persist
Warc has released its latest Global Marketing Index (GMI), a monthly indicator of the state of the global marketing industry.
The Headline GMI, a metric regarding trends observed in marketing budgets, staffing levels and trading conditions registered a 55.0 in January, an improvement of 2.5 points over December. This marks the index’s highest recorded value since May 2012.
On the marketing budget front, the good news is that budgets have increased in January for the first time since May 2012, which marks only the fourth time in the last 16 months. The Americas shows the strongest growth, but the not so good news is that marketers in Asia Pacific and Europe continue to cut budgets because there is an underlying sense of caution by marketers in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty, particularly within the Eurozone.
Staffing levels show significant improvement globally (56.7) with the Americas showing rapid rises in employment (61.0). The index registered a 55.6 for Asia Pacific and 54.0 on Europe.
Under a third component of the Index, global trading conditions continue to indicate fairly rapid improvement for January (57.9), with a modest point rise from December. Asia Pacific (57.8) and Europe (55.4) both registered month-on-month increases. The same index for the Americas stands at 59.3, representing a 1.8 point decline from the previous month.
