Sharpest rise in DM spend for 2 years

The April sunshine is not the only thing giving direct marketers a warm glow, the latest IPA Bellwether Report shows the sharpest rise in companies boosting DM budgets for two years, and the sixth successive increase since Q1 2013.
The report, now in its 15th year, does not actually detail by how much each company increased their spend, instead the figures are based on the net balance of companies reporting a rise against those reporting a cut. Nevertheless it is still a recognised barometer of what is going on in marketing departments.
Overall, 11.8% of companies increased their budgets in Q1 2015, up markedly from 6.1% in Q4 2014.
The upward revision to direct budgets in Q1 – up 5.5% – follows a total rise of 12% during 2014. Ad budgets were not quite as bullish, inching up just 2.9% during Q1.
Perhaps unsurprisingly all sectors are dwarfed by online budgets which soared 8.4% in Q1 – extending their run of growth to 23 successive quarters – and 46.2% during 2014 alone.
In terms of hard cash, the Bellwether predicts a real-term increase in UK marketing spend of +4.2% in 2015 before growth cools slightly in 2016 to +3.6%.
Paul Smith, senior economist at Markit and author of the Bellwether Report, said: “While many commentators await to see what form Britain’s post-election economic landscape takes, marketing executives seem to be shrugging off any uncertainty. Indeed, latest data shows companies planning to bolster their marketing budgets for the forthcoming accounting period to the greatest degree in eight years.
“Already coming off the best annual performance in a decade, growth looks highly likely to be extended into a third year in 2015/16. Accordingly we are predicting a strong real-term increase in UK adspend over 2015 as a whole.”