The Marketing Week / Bellwether Confidence Index

Confidence remains high but fails to maintain record levels

Marketers were less optimistic about the financial prospects of their companies during the first quarter of 2007, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Bellwether Confidence Index.

The dip comes after marketers reported their highest levels of optimism for two years in the last quarter of 2006. According to the data, which is exclusive to Marketing Week, levels of optimism are still higher than in previous years with 42% of marketers saying there has been an improvement in their company’s financial pros-pects. It compares with 50.3% last quarter.

Marketers are also becoming more optimistic about the financial prospects of their industry with a record 23.6% believing things had improved compared to 22.3% last quarter. However, 23.6% of respondents also felt less optimistic about their industry.

The upbeat views of marketers is in line with the findings from the main Bellwether survey, which found that marketing spend rose at its fastest rate for three year during the first quarter of this year.

Financial prospects for your industry compared to three months ago