39% of companies have set their initial budgets for 2011 above what they spent in 2010, although 22% have earmarked less marketing spend year on year. according to the latest Bellwether survey.

The report is published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and it found that much of the cutting by marketing executives was due to public sector spending cuts.

The coalition government on taking office cut among other things, government spending on advertising.  I have not kept tabs on what happened in each sector, but in one sector that I follow (education) the result was a disastrous drop in the number of people applying for teaching courses.  The government’s response was to ask the advertising industry to donate its creative abilities and space free of charge as part of the big society.  The response from the industry is not printable but did include a reference to how much tax advertising pays the government.

But the  Bellwether survey found that 25% of UK companies reported that they cut their budgets in the first three months of the year, so a minority of firms are trying to keep going by reducing their advertising.

But as Nicola Mendelsohn, president of the IPA pointed out, “However we must remind ourselves that this downgrade is still markedly less severe than that seen throughout 2008 and 2009.”

And we must also note that 2010 so quite a rise in advertising.  Plus, when asked about the financial prospects for their own companies, marketing directors were more upbeat than they were in the final quarter of 2010.

Direct marketing spending was revised down for the first time in 18 months – but mostly this seems to be accounted for by the fact that money was moved out of postal advertising into internet advertising.

What is certainly true is that there are now more ways of spending one’s money in advertising than ever before, and that is quite possibly a significant influence on the figures.

Tony Attwood – you can follow us on Twitter @HHMailings and by subscribing free of charge at direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com